For many service teams, the most demanding stretch of the year begins in late November. In 2026, Black Friday falls on 27 November and Cyber Monday on 30 November. The Christmas season follows, and in January comes the wave of returns. For Germany, the retail association HDE expected around 5.8 billion euros in sales across Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2025. Returns researcher Björn Asdecker of the University of Bamberg forecast around 550 million returns for 2025 – almost one in four online parcels is sent back in full or in part. Every one of these orders and returns can trigger a question, a complaint or a phone call.
How many contacts will come in and how many agents are needed is a planning question. This article covers the other half: what a service team does when the peak turns out higher than expected despite good planning. It is about the contingency mechanics that need to be in place beforehand so they can be switched on with a single click when it matters.
Why good planning alone is not enough
Even the best forecast delivers an expected value, not a guarantee. A parcel carrier reports delays, a payment provider goes down for two hours, a newsletter goes out with a wrong discount code – and within minutes contact volume doubles. Anyone who only then starts thinking about whom to call in and which announcement fits loses exactly the time in which the queue builds up.
A peak contingency plan therefore answers three questions in advance: At what threshold does the situation count as a peak? Which measures are activated, and in what order? And who is allowed to make that call? Typical thresholds are the number of callers waiting, the longest current wait time or the share of abandoned calls in the last fifteen minutes. What matters is that these values are visible on the live dashboard, not only in the end-of-day report.
Preparing overflow: who steps in when the queue tips over
The most effective reserve consists of people outside the core team who can still answer the most common requests: colleagues from sales, order processing or accounting. For them to help when it counts, three things need to be prepared:
- Overflow groups set up in the system that are added automatically when the threshold is exceeded – and only then.
- A short briefing on the five to ten most frequent seasonal requests, not on the entire product range.
- Clear boundaries: what the backup handles on their own, and what they pass on to the core team as a ticket with a note.
It also pays to offer a callback as soon as the wait time exceeds a set limit. Callers keep their place without hanging on the line, and the team works through the callbacks as the peak eases. The key is that the promise is kept – a forgotten callback is doubly annoying in peak season.
Announcements that prevent calls instead of prolonging them
Many calls at peak times share the same cause: a known delivery delay, a problem in the online shop, a question about the return deadline. An up-to-date announcement before the queue answers these questions before anyone has to wait – and many callers hang up satisfied because they already have the information.
Announcement texts for foreseeable situations should therefore be prepared and approved in advance, for example for delivery delays, system outages, extended return periods or changed opening hours over the holidays. When it happens, they are simply switched on, not written from scratch. Just as important: the announcement is switched off again once the situation is over. An outdated outage message is more unsettling than none at all.
Prioritising channels deliberately
At peak times, phone, chat, email and messaging compete for the same people. Without a rule, everyone works wherever things are loudest at that moment. A sequence agreed in advance works better: phone and live chat take priority because customers are waiting there in real time. Emails receive an automatic acknowledgement with a realistic response commitment and are handled in batches during quieter periods.
A temporary channel switch can also relieve pressure: callers hear in the announcement that their return status is available via WhatsApp or in their customer account. This only works if the alternative channel really is faster and the answer is actually available there.
The January returns wave: answering standard requests in a standard way
After Christmas, the mix of requests shifts. Instead of “Where is my order?” customers now ask “How do I send this back?”, “When will I get my refund?” and “Can I exchange instead of returning?”. These questions are highly predictable, which makes them well suited to prepared response templates, a dedicated section in the knowledge base and AI-assisted pre-qualification in chat.
It also helps to route return requests into a separate queue. That way, complaints and complex cases do not get stuck behind hundreds of standard questions – and after the season, the analysis shows which causes could be avoided with better product descriptions or clearer return information.
Conclusion: build the emergency switch before the peak arrives
Seasonal peaks cannot be planned away, but their impact can be contained. Teams that define thresholds, overflow groups, callback rules, prepared announcements and a channel sequence before the end of November can react quickly in peak season instead of improvising. With myContactCenter from ilogixx, overflow rules, announcements and queues can be managed centrally and switched on for the peak at the flick of a switch – across telephony, chat, email and WhatsApp.
Would you like to make your customer service ready for peak season? Book a free consultation via the online calendar on ilogixx.de – we will go through your contingency plan together.
