Best Tips for Managing Seasonal Support Volume during BFCM

Peak seasons and high volumes are right around the corner- yes, you read that right! And you may think to yourself you have enough time, as we’re just starting July, but the truth is, this is the perfect time to prepare yourself. 

When we talk about BFCM or any other Q4 holiday, there’s nothing like being too early, and a lot of CX experts agree on this. This article’s roadmap starts in August, but when you think about it, to be prepared for August, you need to evaluate your current situation by July. 

If you want this year’s strategy to be more successful than last year, then this is the perfect month to start the work. Planning ahead is the smartest way to improve your BFCM strategy. Companies that prepare their CX team now will see better outcomes by the end of the year, so start now. 

We know it can be hard to plan with too much anticipation, but the results will prove you right. Early BFCM readiness also means training your team to effectively use your CX tech stack, and sometimes you’ll need to integrate new tools. When analyzing everything it involves, you realize that IT IS right around the corner. 

So, if you have no idea where to start, let’s begin our journey into discovering one of the first steps for a successful BFCM strategy: Finding the right tools for your team. 

A strong BFCM strategy needs to start months before execution, and if you start in July, you’ll earn four to five months of grace where you can build and fix your operations on time. Your teams and customers will appreciate your effort. 

Reacting too late is the biggest mistake companies make, and you won’t realize it till November, when you won’t have time to improve. Considering how customers behave now, they’ll move to another business that’s built to operate during heavy seasons. 

45% of consumers begin holiday shopping before November, while 62% continue purchasing throughout December, extending the period when support teams need to operate at peak performance. Starting in July gives organizations enough operational advantage to:

• Audit your entire customer support ecosystem. Including the team’s performance, tools, automation, and verify data. This gives you enough time to identify gaps and act immediately to build the right strategy that improves your customer journey.
• The ability to use Labor Day and other late-summer campaigns as controlled tests. These lower-risk sales events help validate staffing plans, routing logic, and customer communication before BFCM traffic arrives. 
• Time to clean knowledge bases. Knowledge bases act as the source of truth where both human and AI agents retrieve information to assist your customers. Reviewing and updating them constantly helps you keep clear documentation and enhance your support.
• Time to configure automations. AI feeds on accurate information and data, and you need to verify everything is updated with enough time. Running tests before launching gives you an immediate competitive advantage over those who delay it. 
• Time to onboard outsourced and nearshore teams. Effective nearshore teams rely entirely on the onboarding phase and training. By starting the scouting process with time, you’ll prepare the resources they need and find the right talent that exceeds your customers’ expectations. Build a training strategy that includes: brand voice, AI usage, customer needs, support metrics, and best practices.
• Time to pressure-test workflows before BFCM. Working under pressure only ends up in burnout; to prevent this, you need to run tests that simulate the expected volume. Teams will get used to your workflows if you give them enough time to test them and try every feature beforehand. 

Don’t forget about the tools

This preparation also helps avoid a common mistake: implementing technology too quickly. According to Forrester, around 30% of organizations are at risk of damaging their customer experience in 2026 through poorly executed AI self-service, while a Gartner survey found that 55% of customer service leaders are using AI to support more customers without reducing headcount. 

Technology delivers the greatest value when it's implemented early, tested thoroughly, and paired with a well-prepared CX team. When you do it, technology provides several benefits, so your main priority should be to find a balance between human support and AI assistance. Technology should enhance your team’s performance, not replace them. 

Like every other strategy, BFCM readiness depends on getting the fundamentals right. Focusing on products and services only is a big mistake; you need to prioritize your customer needs and their experience. The biggest peak-season CX operations fundamentals include:

1. Forecast demand using historical and real-time data

The biggest preparation tip we can give you is to analyze historical data to evaluate your current needs. If your previous strategy was successful, then use what went right and improve what went wrong. Document everything, and next year you’ll be better prepared. Predicting volume effectively only happens if you analyze historical results. 

2. Build a flexible workforce model

Data is not the only strategic asset you’ll need to leverage, as it is worthless without a prepared team. Based on your historical data, set your goals, and make sure to hire the right talent to supply your needs. The right model depends on the business, but flexibility is essential to scaling seasonal customer support without sacrificing quality.

3. Automate repetitive customer inquiries

Technology is another great participant in your BFCM strategy; evaluate how your current tech stack performs and decide if you need to change it or keep it. Based on your choice, try every feature: AI chatbots, IVR, intelligent routing, self-service portals, FAQs, and order tracking before launching it. 

4. Adopt cloud-based, scalable infrastructure

Technology is not enough if it doesn’t adapt to your needs, so make sure your entire infrastructure is scalable. Cloud-based platforms allow your company to maintain your service quality even when volumes increase, integrating smoothly into your operations and keeping your operations up-to-date. 

5. Deliver a true omnichannel experience

Your customers expect smooth transitions between your support channels and you can’t dive into BFCM without ensuring great omnichannel support during holidays. Omnichannel strategies allow customers to jump through phone, email, live chat, SMS, and social media without having to repeat information, avoiding friction. This ensures your strategy is consistent, enhancing the experience.

6. Monitor operations in real time

Even if you have historical data and plan with it, that’s not enough. You need to track live data when the BFCM operations are launched to keep things on the right path. Supervisors should monitor queue volumes, response times, SLA compliance, CSAT, first-contact resolution, and channel performance throughout the entire strategy to act immediately.

7. Prepare agents before peak season

Onboarding and training play a key role for any customer support strategy. Every BFCM strategy deserves its own set of resources depending on your needs. Building a playbook is your best choice, as you include historical data and updated information. This ensures better brand consistency and improved agent experience.

8. Communicate proactively

Communication is what makes or breaks the execution. While teams can operate without being micromanaged, they still need assistance, and you need to offer it. Keeping a connected communication strategy between teams avoids issues. 

The hidden gap in most BFCM strategies

Two of the most common pieces of advice you’ll read out there are: hire more agents and automate more. Well, we’re sorry to break it, but that’s not enough. While that advice could work, they focus on volume and capacity exclusively, they’re not treating the main diagnosis. 

When your CX operations are under pressure, scaling and AI won’t save you. The best advice is to find a way where your team, workflows, tools, and customers are aligned, so building a system that serves everyone is key. 

Building an operating model where technology supports people, people improve processes, and every component is intentionally aligned with the organization's operating model is the best advice you can receive. Thinking beyond staffing plans and chatbots is your go-to strategy, and to do so, you must include:

• Clear ownership across the CX department, with defined responsibilities.
• Customer-specific workflows that route conversations based on complexity and experience.
• AI governance that ensures the tools are ethical and accurate.
• Seamless integrations between help desks, CRM, ecommerce support platforms, shipping providers, and other core systems.
• Quality assurance teams that audit the entire operations and support ecosystem to keep everything consistent.
• A post-purchase support strategy that includes proactive communication and ensures customers feel valued after they buy.

Technology is useful for delivering and tracking data, but without the right people and processes to retrieve and analyze it, it's useless.  A high-performing CX strategy is built on four interconnected variables, which are: 

1. Data & insights: Start with what your business actually needs

Data is your biggest strategic asset, so making sure you have historical data available offers a big advantage. That data helps you forecast volume & needs that identify operational risks and opportunities. 

Business intelligence platforms organize and analyze data to transform it into actionable insights. The best strategies are built from historical information and forecasts, so leverage those two variables to improve your BFCM support. 

2. People: Build teams around roles

When you combine the insights with talented people, you get an exceptional customer experience model that allows you to offer personalized assistance. Transforming your company into a proactive business that delivers tailored solutions to its customers, which is one of the biggest expectations they have. 

During BFCM, you don’t have to scale just for the sake of doing business; think before you act. Sometimes your team is underprepared due to poor training resources, not a lack of members. So, make sure you build a team that’s well-trained and includes the following roles: operational leadership, workforce planning, automation specialists, quality assurance, and knowledge management, supported by a scalable workforce of outsourced partners, seasonal agents, and senior escalation specialists.

3. Process: Create consistency before volume arrives

While data and your people are important, there must be clear processes that define how they complement each other. Establishing QA workflows, routing logic, macros, escalation processes, and documentation is needed to optimize your strategies. 

Before working on any BFCM steps, you need to make sure your processes are understandable so everyone who interacts with them knows what to do. Ensure your team has enough resources to avoid wandering and make data available.

4. Technology: Enable, integrate, and scale

Now’s the time to talk about technology: your team, your processes, and your data all depend on the right tools. But why? Technology helps you audit and establish workflows’ logic, and your team uses technology to access historical data that helps them to better serve your customers.

At the end of the day, technology plays a pivotal role in seasonal customer support. The right CX tech stack should support existing workflows rather than forcing organizations to redesign them.

If you find yourself currently spiraling over which tools to hire, just make sure your needs and goals are well defined. After doing that, know that a single tool won’t cut the deal; you need to build an environment of tools that coexist and collaborate to enhance your CX.

Tech-forward CX in practice

A good example of this approach is Horatio's work with an ecommerce retailer experiencing rapid growth and increasing support complexity. Rather than simply adding agents, the focus was on redesigning the support operation through process optimization, automation, and technology integration.

By centralizing customer interactions, refining workflows, and implementing AI-assisted support, the team reduced response times while improving operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. Instead of replacing human agents, technology handled repetitive requests, allowing specialists to focus on more complex conversations that required empathy and problem-solving.

Ultimately, the best tools for managing seasonal support volume in customer service are those that integrate with the business's existing ecommerce ecosystem and support its unique workflows.

If you want to exceed your business and customer expectations, the best strategy you can follow is to be ready on time. But how can you do that effectively? Well, the short answer is that you need to start preparing right now.

Preparing the first steps in July ensures that your team will have enough time to collect data, test features, hire a new workforce (if needed), implement tools, and train. This gives you enough competitive advantage to conduct changes on time and resources to enhance the experience during peak season. 

At Horatio, we understand the importance of preparing your support infrastructure with time, which is why we want to help you build your next winning strategy. Contact us and let's start planning for your success during BFCM!

When should businesses start preparing customer support for BFCM?

Ideally, preparation should begin as early as July, giving teams four to five months to audit their CX tech stack, forecast demand, onboard seasonal or outsourced agents, test automations, and refine workflows before peak shopping season begins.

What technologies support a customer service strategy during BFCM?

A strong customer service strategy combines CRM, help desk software, AI automation, workforce management, knowledge bases, analytics dashboards, shipping integrations, and returns platforms. Together, these technologies create a connected CX ecosystem that improves efficiency while supporting personalized customer experiences.

How can businesses scale seasonal customer support without sacrificing quality?

Organizations may combine internal teams with outsourced or nearshore support, seasonal agents, automation, or cross-trained employees. This flexible staffing model allows businesses to manage higher ticket volumes while maintaining consistent service levels.

Why is a customized CX team important during BFCM?

Every business has different products, customers, workflows, and support challenges. A customized CX team aligns staffing, processes, technology, and automation with the organization's specific needs instead of relying on a generic customer support model.

Should businesses outsource customer support for BFCM?

Outsourcing can provide the flexibility needed to handle seasonal demand without permanently increasing headcount. When outsourced teams are onboarded early and integrated with existing processes and technology, they can quickly become an extension of the in-house CX operation.