Businesses must be preparing for Black Friday as early as they can, as this is one of the most important tasks of the year. But, how do you prepare your brand for Black Friday? Well, even though there are many ways to do it, you need to know that planning with enough time your strategies is one of the best ways to do it. 

Back in the day, physical stores used to prepare by having everything ready for the customers’ storm that was coming on the special day. Now, it is basically similar, just that it all has transferred into the digital space, so companies need to make sure their website is user-ready and can offer an intuitive experience to their customers. 

Preparation goes beyond placing discounts and reducing prices, customer support is a great player nowadays. So, there are some steps that need to be followed in order to survive and have a winning strategy. In this blog, we will help you with some best practices for your store and your support team to be ready for this Black Friday. 

How to prepare your business for Black Friday tips

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Plan early & set goals

You need to know that preparing for Black Friday is not something you start a few weeks before the big day. If you want your business to succeed, then you must begin months in advance. A last-minute strategy will not help you overcome competition when they are already offering early-bird discounts or pre-sale access weeks ahead of time. Not to mention when they have built their entire infrastructure to support the increase in sales.

So if you have no idea where to start, then do so by setting clear and measurable goals across every function of the business, these include sales, marketing, customer support, logistics, and tech infrastructure. You need to define what success means to you: Is it a specific revenue target? Reducing cart abandonment rate? Handling customer inquiries within a set timeframe? Whatever goal you aim for, you must know that without metrics, there’s no way to assess if your Black Friday efforts worked or if they need to improve.

So, for those asking how to prepare for Black Friday, the answer is simple, it starts with a precise, well-documented plan that spans across every department.

Personalize your promotions

Promotions are the hook that brings customers in, but the real winners of Black Friday build strategic offers, not random discounts. Today, customers are not looking to save money only, they want to experience a great journey with their preferred companies. You will want to start by analyzing historical sales data to identify your top-performing products to offer personalized deals based on them. Focus promotions on these items, but also create attractive bundles that increase average order value.

These limited-time offers can create urgency and keep your customers engaged throughout the Black Friday period, also integrating tiered loyalty programs encourages bigger purchases and repeated sales beyond this special date.

Exclusivity makes your customers feel valued, early access deals for VIPs or loyalty members can also drive sales. Don’t forget to follow up with personalized thank-you emails or tailored recommendations post-purchase, this will help you reinforce loyalty and increase the chances of repeat sales.

Pay attention to inventory management

A great mistake most companies make is to overpromise, they offer products they don’t have enough stock for, this causes frustration and can lead potential customers to wander off to the competition.

Inventory management is critical when preparing your Black Friday strategy. What can you do for this? Sync your inventory systems with your ecommerce platform to provide real-time stock updates. Communicate stock availability clearly on product pages to set expectations upfront.

Besides these two strategies, do not forget about shipping, as it is very important for the customer to receive the product fast and without damage. Shipping can also become a selling point, when you offer free shipping or expedited options, you can help shoppers decide for your company. Make sure you are prepared to handle a spike in orders and have contingency plans in place in case of delays. Transparency in all these aspects is key. Keeping your customers informed about expected delivery times, especially if demand surges unexpectedly will help you reduce the strain on your customer support teams later.

Website optimization

A slow website can kill conversions, especially on mobile. In 2024, 48% of all Black Friday e-commerce sales were made via smartphones, yet 74% of visitors will abandon a mobile site if it takes longer than 5 seconds to load. 

Have you ever browsed a website for information and if it doesn’t load almost immediately you get frustrated and leave? Well, now imagine how your customers feel. And what they will feel if they need to wait because your website is not loading fast enough, even if they need your product. That’s a huge missed opportunity for unoptimized sites, and we want you to prevent this by staying aware of your loading metrics.

If you’re wondering how to prepare for Black Friday, optimizing your online presence is non-negotiable then. Conduct load testings constantly to ensure your site handles surges in traffic without breaking a sweat. Improve mobile responsiveness, compress images, streamline your checkout process, and cut unnecessary steps that slow users down, this way you ensure a smooth website experience for everyone.

Site security should also be tightened to protect customer data, especially with the increased risk of fraud during high-traffic periods.

Marketing & customer retention are key

Your email campaigns, SMS marketing efforts, Google ads, and social media teasers should all be in motion weeks before the event. But you don’t have to blast the same message to everyone. This is where segmentation and personalization are essential to get to the right audience, in the right way.

Creating a sense of urgency with countdowns, limited stock warnings, or early-bird deals can increase your chances to succeed. Use exit-intent popups to capture leads before visitors leave, and set up retargeting ads to recapture interest from site visitors who didn’t convert.

With 77% of online carts abandoned daily, you need a robust cart recovery strategy. Send well-timed reminder emails with clear calls to action and perhaps a small incentive to nudge the purchase along.

Post-sale engagement

If you only focus on obtaining a sale from a customer, you are missing out on a great life-time relationship with them. Brands that win the long game focus on post-sale engagement, how can you do it? After a customer buys, send thank-you emails to ask for reviews and provide personalized recommendations based on their purchase.

Incorporate loyalty programs that reward repeat business, and keep your brand top of mind with follow-up communications that go beyond selling and add value, like care tips for purchased products or sneak peeks at upcoming collections.

This is an often overlooked step in preparing for Black Friday, but it can increase your customer retention and lifetime value.

Boost your online presence

To fully take advantage of Black Friday, your business must improve their online presence to be strong and optimized. This can be achieved by different means like refining SEO strategies and ensuring your site ranks for product and promotional searches.

Engage actively on social media, publish blog posts around gift guides or shopping tips, and leverage influencers or affiliates to expand your reach. The target is to have enough visibility before the day comes, so even if your company is not too big, you can take advantage of your online presence, but you need to start now. Small businesses may not be too enthusiastic about starting because they will feel left behind, but the following years they will thank themselves for starting.

Improve customer support

Customer service is the pillar of modern Black Friday strategies, as your customers will be buying from online stores, they expect fully prepared agents to assist them. Great support can be the difference between a customer doing a sale or abandoning their cart. You must prepare your customer support team with the resources they need to handle high ticket volumes, including updated FAQs, quick access to stock and shipping information, and scripts for common inquiries.

Scaling your support team or integrating automation like chatbots can also help manage the increased load, ensuring customers get the help they need without frustrating delays.

Customer support teams: how to prepare for Black Friday

Black Friday is also a major stress test for customer support, as it goes beyond your marketing and sales team. You need to make sure your support team is prepared, if not, you risk higher ticket backlogs and slower response times, which translates into frustrated customers who won’t hesitate to walk away.

If you’re serious about preparing for Black Friday, you need a solid game plan to empower your support team to operate at peak efficiency.

Customer service training is essential

Support tickets volumes can double or triple during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Leaving agents untrained in that storm is a recipe for disaster, so make sure they are well-prepared to face those situations.

Training should be practical and data-driven. A great way to start is by reviewing common issues from previous Black Fridays. Did customers struggle with promo codes? Did they ask repeatedly about shipping timelines or return policies? Build training modules around these patterns.

Run mock scenarios and speed drills to prepare agents for handling peak-hour traffic without compromising quality. A well-trained team can dramatically reduce resolution times, protect brand reputation, and keep customers moving through the sales funnel.

Focus on personalization 

Even when expecting a lot of customers and a large volume of sales, personalization matters. Shoppers expect support that recognizes them as individuals, not just ticket numbers, this helps them feel valued because even when you are having a lot of sales you are taking your time to recognize them.

Train agents to quickly access customer order histories, past interactions, and loyalty statuses. When agents can greet customers by name and reference their purchases, it creates a smoother, and more human experience. Personalized service also improves first-contact resolution, cutting down on unnecessary follow-ups.

Improve agents’ speed

Speed is crucial when customer inquiries are flowing in by the hundreds or thousands, so you need to equip your agents with shortcuts and up-to-date knowledge bases. Your goal is beyond faster responses, but delivering accurate ones, being efficient must be your top objective every time.

Time-saving tools like macros and canned responses help maintain consistency across your support team without making the experience feel robotic. 

Evaluate your previous years’ strategies

One of the smartest steps in preparing for Black Friday is a thorough review of last year’s performance. Look at metrics like:

• Average first response time
• Ticket resolution time
• Most common customer pain points
• Which channels (email, chat, in-app, phone, sms) saw the most traffic

This retrospective helps identify gaps and refine strategies. What worked last year should be scaled; what didn’t must be fixed before the next surge. You must understand what worked and why it did, if not you will try to replicate without a base. Analyzing the why goes beyond simply knowing what worked.

Ask for customer feedback 

Post-interaction surveys are invaluable as it gives you direct insights on what your customers perceive and need. Direct customer feedback reveals blind spots and areas where your team can improve. Set up brief surveys after support interactions asking customers about their experience, satisfaction, and suggestions.

Even a single question like “Was your issue resolved?” can provide actionable insight that informs future training and resource allocation. Make sure your customers trust you enough for them to want to share their feedback, that is a valuable asset for your company. 

Apply automation strategies

Automation is your ally when scaling customer support during Black Friday. Implementing chatbots to handle FAQs, order status inquiries, and basic troubleshooting will release the stress from you and your support team. It lightens the load on your human agents, allowing them to focus on more complex and sensitive cases where their unique human perspective will be more valuable.

Workflow automation can also route tickets based on topic, priority, or customer tier, ensuring the right person handles the right issue faster. Customers value it since they will be receiving efficient support from the best-prepared agent to handle their case.

Use support scripts if needed

Customer service scripts ensure that agents communicate consistently during chaotic periods, ensuring they have a better idea of what to say when talking to a customer. You must prepare adaptable support scripts for common scenarios like:

• Promo code issues
• Order tracking questions
• Refund and return policies
• Shipping delays

Well-designed scripts don’t sound robotic. Instead, they serve as guides to keep responses clear and on-brand even when the queue is full. Also, you must prepare your agents to use their own words, scripts are only a guide when they need help, they shouldn’t be their go-to answer.

Outsource teams if needed

If your business does not have the resources to hire an in-house support team, don’t worry there are other options, but do not leave support aside. That’s where outsourcing comes in. Partnering with specialized customer support outsourcing companies can provide the extra manpower you need to manage spikes in volume without compromising quality.

Ensure that any outsourced team is properly trained on your products, brand voice, and customer policies. Poorly trained outsourced agents can do more harm than good. 

Scaling support with outsourcing providers doesn’t just add bodies, as it provides flexibility. Having an extended team can be the push that protects your core support staff from burnout.

Evaluate at the end to improve next year

Once the dust settles, you can sit down to celebrate the sales numbers, but you also need to evaluate your support performance. When your Black Friday strategy finishes, you must conduct a full analysis of:

• How many tickets were handled?
• What was the average resolution time?
• What were the most common issues?
• How did automation perform?

Document every insight and make improvements for next year. Learning from real data ensures that your business is always moving forward, better prepared for the next Black Friday.

How to offer great proactive customer support:

When being serious about preparing for Black Friday, you can’t afford to leave customer support aside. If you want your business to thrive during this intense period then you must go proactive, but how can you do it? When you anticipate customers’ needs, solve problems before they escalate, and keep communication clear at every stage of the customer journey, you are being proactive.

Black Friday and proactiveness must be paired together for your strategy to work. Here’s how you can prepare a proactive support strategy that minimizes frustration and maximizes satisfaction.

1. Proactive outreach

The very first thing to improve is the outreach, if you want to be proactive, then you must be the one reaching out to your audience, not them to you. Contacting your audience before they even realize they need help is the go-to strategy here. On an important date as Black Friday, you can reach out to your audience and let them know: 

• Your upcoming promotions
• Product restrictions or limitations 
• Estimated shipping times for guaranteed delivery
• Support wait times to set expectations

When you are the one letting them know about this, you will prevent them from storming your support team’s inbox. Usually your customers will be the ones frustrated about long wait times or delivery delays, but when you let them know beforehand that it may happen you prevent dissatisfaction.

2. Real-time assistance

Customers expect businesses to evolve as their needs change over time, and one of their most critical needs are speed and effectiveness. If you want to stay competitive then you must offer real-time assistance, and one of the best ways to do it is by implementing live chat features. But, your human agents alone won’t be able to handle Black Friday volumes. Make sure your company is properly staffed with experienced agents during peak traffic hours to handle complex inquiries combined with bots that take care of simpler queries.

This is where chatbots come in, smartly programmed bots can:

• Answer common questions instantly (like promo terms or stock availability)
• Guide users through checkout
• Provide order tracking updates

The human + bot combo ensures your customers are getting immediate answers while your agents are freed up to handle specific cases.

3. Website popups & alerts

Being able to combine personalization with website notifications is a great way to ensure your customers feel valued. Getting to know them at such level where you let them know about specific discounts or new products based on their historical data will give your company a great advantage. You can use behavior-based triggers to surface relevant information at the right time, such as:

• Low stock alerts when an item is running out
• Reminders of shipping deadlines as customers browse
• Links to FAQs or customer service when users are lost on a page
• Notifications on new product discounts

This dynamic support reduces uncertainty and increases conversion rates, lowering the number of tickets your support team will manage.

As we mentioned before, online presence is key for your business, and these pop-ups will help you with it. 

4. Analyze customer behavior

Proactivity goes beyond messaging your customers before they reach out to you, it is improving constantly before they tell you about it. To improve continuously, you need to monitor and analyze customer behavior on your site:

• Where do customers drop off?
• Which FAQs are getting the most hits?
• Are there common complaints or issues during checkout?

Use this data to refine your proactive support measures. For example, if your collected data shows your users bounce at checkout due to an issue related to your payment options, that’s a signal to have a clear process or to add chat support. Doing it before your customers reach out, will definitely improve their satisfaction. 

Consistent analysis helps prepare for Black Friday, and it strengthens your entire CX strategy.

How to relieve your agents from stress:

Customer support agents are the frontline of the Black Friday rush, so you need to take care of them too, releasing stress from their work so they can be more motivated. Long hours, back-to-back inquiries, and frustrated customers can quickly lead to burnout if businesses aren’t intentional about protecting their teams. When asking how to prepare your business for Black, relieving agent stress is just as critical as scaling operations or refining promotions.

One of the most effective ways to reduce stress on support teams is by empowering customers to help themselves. Self-service resources and easy-to-use order tracking options can dramatically cut down the volume of incoming tickets. These resources need to be thorough but also mobile-optimized and easily searchable to avoid customer effort. Considering that many Black Friday sales happen on smartphones, having a well-structured mobile help center is non-negotiable. By investing in these tools, businesses improve customer experience and also ensure their support teams won’t suffer from unnecessary workload.

Automating repetitive and predictable tasks saves time and mental energy for agents, and reducing unnecessary tasks from their routine will help them focus on what’s important. Automation ensures that simpler queries are handled efficiently, leaving human agents to focus on complex or sensitive cases that require emotional intelligence and problem-solving skills. This is a critical step that will ensure your support system scales without overwhelming your people.

Managing schedules and breaks is a great way to help maintain a healthy work environment for your employees. The nonstop nature of Black Friday can lead to unhealthy work patterns if shift rotations and rest periods aren’t enforced. Rotating shifts strategically and respecting break times helps maintain energy levels and focus. Real-time monitoring of workloads can also flag when teams are stretched too thin so that managers can adjust staffing. Small morale boosters, whether it’s snacks, performance bonuses, public recognition, or even just a well-timed coffee delivery, can make a big difference during peak periods.

Beyond operational tweaks, businesses should also consider implementing wellness programs tailored for high-stress periods. Offering access to mental health resources, stress management workshops, or even short mindfulness sessions can help support staff reset and recharge. For companies committed to preparing for Black Friday in a sustainable way, investing in the well-being of their teams it’s a necessity. 

Maintaining healthy practices in your company will prevent your employees from being burned out, increasing their chances to stay loyal, improving your customer satisfaction at the same time. But, even though your customer is the first priority for your business, you must also make efforts to keep your employees happy, they are the front line of your business.

Are you ready for Black Friday?

Have you audited your previous Black Friday strategies? Have your work on new strategies begun? If you haven’t given a thought to Black Friday by now, you will stay behind, but don’t worry, you can always improve for next year! Be prepared to tackle this important date from an early stage next year to ensure a winning strategy.

But, planning early is not enough, setting goals and asking for employee and customer feedback will enhance your efforts. Your customers and employees need to be the main pillars from Black Friday, so improving customer support and keeping healthy work measures for your employees ensures you keep them both safe and satisfied.
If you want to start focusing on your support, we can help you! At Horatio, we want to help companies that are in need of outsourcing their support, aiming to keep their customers and teams happy. Contact us if you want to be better prepared for Black Friday!