Happy New Year! If you are reading this, congratulations, you did it!
The dust is slowly settling on the peak season madness – apart from the returns peak. The Black Friday spikes, the Cyber Monday rush, and the last-minute Christmas panic are behind us. Hopefully, you’re looking at some healthy revenue figures. You’re probably also looking at a customer service team that needs some time to recover.
We know what the last months looked like for many of you. You likely spent your evenings replying to “Where is my order?” (WISMO) emails because the carrier was delayed. You might have had your marketplace account health dip into the danger zone because you couldn’t answer a query in Spanish on a Sunday. Or perhaps you just threw money at the problem, hiring temporary staff who barely had time to learn your product catalogue before the phones started ringing.
Now that you have a moment to breathe, it is the perfect time to look at your operations while the memories and pain are still fresh. You don’t need to work harder next peak season; you just need to tweak your operation a bit.
Here are three specific upgrades that do not require massive budget or a lot of manpower to ensure that your next peak season is smoother, more cost efficient, and far less stressful.
1. Time to include AI in your Customer Service Operation
For years, the debate within the customer service industry was “Human vs. AI”. It was the wrong debate. The answer isn’t one or the other. It’s both.
If your team spent November and December replying “Your parcel is at the depot” five hundred times a day, you are burning valuable resources. High-volume, repetitive questions are the silent killer of customer service morale. They clog up the queues, meaning the customer with a genuine, complex problem has to wait.
The solution: Hybrid Customer Service
The concept is simple but powerful: let AI handle the volume, and let your human agents handle the value.
By implementing a smart AI layer, you can automate up to 70% of those repetitive queries including order status (WISMO), return related questions, and opening hours. AI is available 24/7, it never gets tired, and it gives your customers an instant answer.
The “Hybrid” part is key here. If the AI gets a request it is not trained to solve, or if it detects a frustrated customer, it seamlessly hands the conversation over to a human agent. Your team is then free to use their empathy and expertise where it actually matters. It is cheaper, faster, and ironically, it makes the service more human because your agents aren’t stressed out by a massive backlog.
Why this matters specifically for peak season
Peak season doesn’t just increase volume. It increases time pressure. Customers want answers now, and delays spiral:
- slower replies → more follow-ups → even more volume
- stressed agents → inconsistent replies → escalations
- backlog growth → slower recovery after peak
A hybrid setup helps you protect human time for the requests where it really matters, while keeping response speed high for all the repetitive requests.
How we can help:
- We work alongside your AI solution: All our agents are trained and have experience working in a hybrid setup with the main AI solutions used in Customer Service.
- Leverage our AI solutions: We have developed two AI solutions specifically for ecommerce customer care: AI Hybrid Chat and AI Email Assistant. These tools are optimised and running for several of our clients already.
- Integration partner of AI customer service tools. The integration and training of an AI solution takes time and requires a certain knowledge. We have a dedicated team in place to integrate AI customer service solutions in your ecommerce business.
2. Protect your Account Health: Outsource your Marketplace Support
Selling on marketplaces like Amazon, Kaufland, or Bol can be a massive revenue driver, but the customer service requirements are brutal.
Marketplaces don’t care that it’s Christmas Day, or that it’s 2 AM on a Saturday. They demand a response within 24 hours. If you miss that window, your metrics take a hit. Three strikes and your account gets suspended.
During peak season, this creates a nightmare scenario where founders or support managers are glued to their phones all weekend just to type “We are looking into it” to stop the timer.
The Solution: MarketplaceCare 365
You don’t need to ruin your weekends to keep your Amazon score green. This is exactly why we built MarketplaceCare 365, a dedicated solution designed specifically for marketplace customer service.
MarketplaceCare 365 is positioned specifically around marketplace requirements:
- support for 380+ marketplaces with a focus on SLA compliance
- availability all year round, including holidays
- converting fixed cost to variable (“pay for events”) and lowering cost per event
- automatic scale-up during peak season
A practical approach that doesn’t disrupt your core team
If you are a DTC brand or a multichannel retailer selling via marketplaces this solution is for you as well. It gives you the opportunity for a clean split:
- Inhouse team takes care of the d2c customer service. Protects brand experience, create loyalty amongst repeat customers, escalations, and high-touch cases.
- Outsourced marketplace team owns marketplace inboxes, SLA compliance, and marketplace policy execution.
That split alone can remove a huge amount of peak-season pressure.
3. Scale internationally without the overhead
One of the biggest blockers for true cross-border ecommerce is the “language trap.”
Let’s say you are a UK-shop and you are currently entering the German market. To really compete you have to localise. This includes your customer service. Throughout the year you’ll need the minimum of 3-4 employees if you also want to provide support during the weekend. For a newly expanded shop with a low volume this is a steep investment. And then peak season arrives, and you need to scale up even further…
The solution: flexible shared customer service
At Salesupply we offer flexible customer service in 25 languages as a pay per use model. Meaning you are represented by our trained native ecommerce customer service agents and you only pay for the events you receive.
What is the best customer service upgrade for you?
Perhaps you were already thinking about incorporating AI or finding a solution for your international customer service or your marketplace customer service. If not, we suggest diving into your customer service data both annual data and your peak season data.What does this tell you? Are there certain ticket categories that stand out? Does a certain language collapse more than the others? Were you close to getting your marketplace account suspended during peak season? We gladly look into your data with you.
Plan your free customer service data analysis here
