5 tips for handling high-volume customer service during BFCM

According to Klaviyo’s 2024 BFCM data, more than 15,000 Klaviyo brands had their best sales day of the year during Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM).

But with all that excitement, BFCM also brings a higher volume of support requests that can stretch customer service teams thin.

In 2024, Klaviyo data showed that brands received 1.3 million orders on Black Friday between noon and 1 p.m. ET alone. That kind of order volume brings customer support volume up along with it.

As customers manage their orders, common questions flood helpdesks:

• Where’s my order?
• How do I make a return?
• What are your last-minute shipping policies?

When reaching out with questions, customers want quick answers and personalized service. If you can achieve it, the customer data gains alone can translate to repeat purchases and more revenue. This is how customer support becomes less of a cost center and more of a revenue driver.

Here are 5 tips to improve customer service during high-volume seasons like BFCM.

1. Operate from a single source of customer data

When BFCM rolls around, shoppers are engaging more than usual, bouncing between channels and expecting fast, personalized support.

According to Klaviyo’s future of consumer marketing report, 74% of consumers expect brands to deliver more personalized experiences in 2025. High spenders and frequent purchasers are even more likely to expect personalization from your brand, so it’s important you’re in a position to leverage the customer data sitting in those profiles.

And especially during BFCM, customer service and marketing can’t operate in silos—what happens for one team should inform the other. That’s where an integrated data foundation comes in.

When you invest in unifying customer data across your entire tech stack, you’re giving both your marketing and customer support teams access to a complete record of all the interactions each customer has had with your brand. For example, if a loyalty program customer redeems points to purchase an item but wants to return it, unified customer data makes it easier for your customer service agents to process the return and restore points—all without needing to dig through separate systems to do it.

These two teams see more overlap than most people realize. According to Klaviyo’s 2025 state of B2C marketing report, 75% of marketers say customer service takes up more than 10% of their role. But only 29% of marketers report that their marketing and customer service teams are fully aligned and integrated.

When marketing and service teams are aligned, they see better outcomes. That same report found that organizations with fully or highly aligned teams are 156% more likely to significantly exceed marketing goals.

Here are just a few ways unified customer data can improve customer support experiences during BFCM:

• Consistent, empathetic communications: Unified marketing and service data reduces the likelihood that your customers receive messaging that feels off-base. You might, for example, pause BFCM promotions automatically when a customer has an open support ticket attached to their profile.
• Turning support into re-engagement: Similarly, with a unified data foundation, re-engagement messages become much more timely and relevant. Depending on how a BFCM support conversation goes, for example, you can trigger a discount promotion on a next order (as an apology) or a review request (as more likely after a positive interaction).
• VIP recognition: Identify high-value customers so you can serve them with personalized interactions during BFCM—and improve customer retention among high spenders. If you’re using an AI customer agent (more on this later), this can help you allocate human resources where they’ll have the most impact.
• Personalized product recommendations: When both AI and human agents have access to marketing data, they have the information they need to suggest products and up-sell based on real browsing behavior. During BFCM, this ability to sell through support is a fantastic way to make the most of increased ticket volume.

For example, Caitlyn Minimalist often received requests for status updates on personalized jewelry orders that took two weeks to create, and wanted to be able to manage those conversations more proactively. Now that they’ve centralized customer data in a B2C CRM, they can talk to customers like they really know them—and provide the kind of high-touch service people expect when they place a personalized order.

2. Empower customers with self-service

According to Microsoft, 90% of consumers expect self-service support options. And customers not only expect fast response times. They also want intuitive self-service options for finding answers on their own, on their own time.

Customer self-service can empower shoppers and drive conversions while reducing ticket volume on support teams during BFCM. By creating a self-service customer hub where customers can manage orders, browse products, make purchases, save their favorites for later, and more, you can convert more shoppers, support them faster, and bring them back to buy again.

This kind of self-serve experience frees up agents to focus on urgent or complex issues, reduces the risk of overwhelmed queues, and ensures customers don’t walk away frustrated.

For BFCM, consider optimizing your self-service customer hub with:

• Comprehensive FAQ sections: Help customers find answers to BFCM-specific questions like holiday shipping deadlines, return policies, and gift card usage—without the added hassle of reaching out to a customer service agent.
• Wishlists: Give shoppers the option to add seasonal products to a wishlist. When BFCM deals drop, they can buy more quickly from their saved lists.
• Educational content: Downloadable size guides, care instructions, and BFCM gift guides take the guesswork out of shopping and reduce basic inquiries.

Ministry of Supply set up a self-service customer hub that gives shoppers easy access to recently viewed items, order history, product page links for repurchasing, and more. In less than 4 months, the officewear brand drove 650+ self-serve interactions and deflected support tickets from customers requesting basic information.

3. Answer common BFCM questions with an AI customer agent

During BFCM, an AI customer agent can answer commonly asked questions and even nudge shoppers toward a sale if they’re hesitating.

Consumers are quickly becoming comfortable with the AI agent experience, too. According to Klaviyo’s 2025 online shopping report, 53% of consumers would rather chat with an AI agent than email a customer service representative.

To be most effective and avoid the frustration commonly associated with AI customer service, your AI agent should be trained on your entire product catalog, BFCM-specific FAQs, and customer data. With this foundation, the AI agent can step in to offer personalized and productive support while customers shop.

Here’s what a conversational AI customer agent can do during BFCM:

• Answer common questions instantly. Your BFCM shoppers can get quick responses about order status, sizing, returns, and other product details without waiting for a live human agent.
• Help customers shop as they chat. With “Add to cart” buttons that pop up during conversations, an AI customer agent can nudge BFCM shoppers to complete their purchase after addressing the reason for their hesitation.
• Handle post-purchase requests. From returns to subscription updates, an AI customer agent can manage routine follow-up tasks that would otherwise bog down your team during BFCM.
• Deliver personalized recommendations. An AI customer agent can pull in past purchase history or browsing behavior to recommend products tailored to each BFCM shopper.
• Hand off to a human agent when it’s necessary. When a BFCM customer needs additional help, an AI customer agent can pass the conversation to a human representative with full conversation context.

Since implementing an AI customer agent, natural wax melt brand Happy Wax has seen “a dramatic reduction in support tickets,” says Rachel Fagan, VP of marketing. “This is especially valuable heading into BFCM, when inquiries surge.”

In just 90 days, Fagan reports, over half of conversations the customer agent handled were fully resolved without any service team involvement. “Customers get instant answers, and our team gains bandwidth for high-touch moments,” Fagan adds. “That’s setting us up for success this BFCM.”

4. Consolidate cross-channel conversations with an AI-powered helpdesk

During BFCM, shoppers often don’t just reach out in one place. A customer might ask about sizing in a web chat, follow up on shipping through text, then DM your brand on Instagram.

If your support team is juggling separate tools for each channel, it’s a recipe for missed messages and frustrated customers.

With an AI-powered helpdesk that pulls conversations from email, chat, text, and social media into one unified inbox, your customer service agents can operate with full context and support customers where they prefer to communicate.

AI can also tag support inquiries based on topics like shipping, sizing, product type, resolution type, or urgency, so your human team can understand big-picture trends and respond with more care to different types of requests. Use this data to allocate resources efficiently during high-volume periods like BFCM.

When your agents spend less time tracking down messages across multiple channels, they have more time to solve complex problems and keep the busiest shopping weekend of the year running smoothly.

5. Monitor customer sentiment and make real-time adjustments

BFCM can be unpredictable. A sudden website slowdown, delayed shipments, or even a confusing promo code can spark frustration—and once one shopper posts about it, word spreads fast.

According to Klaviyo’s future of consumer marketing report, 1 in 5 consumers would leave a review immediately following a negative experience with a brand. Another 1 in 5 would either tell friends and family or post about the experience on social media. This kind of bad PR can quickly spiral and impact your brand’s reputation with future shoppers.

The key is to spot issues early and make quick adjustments to resolve complaints before they snowball into bigger problems.

Here’s how to stay ahead of sentiment during the busiest shopping days of the year:

• Keep a pulse on reviews. Use AI-powered review sentiment analysis to quickly understand feedback on products. Relay that feedback to your customer service team so they understand how people are feeling about certain BFCM bestsellers.
• Implement a post-support survey. Gather quick feedback with one-question surveys at the end of customer support conversations so you can improve BFCM service as you go.
• Analyze real-time customer data. Keep an eye on customer analytics measuring engagement, conversions, and self-service interactions. You may be able to cross-reference these metrics with support volume from previous years to estimate ticket volume during BFCM this year.

With active sentiment monitoring, you can be proactive about customer feedback and modify your service even during peak periods like BFCM.

Rethink customer support as a revenue driver with Klaviyo Service

Great customer service turns quick resolutions into long-term relationships and new revenue opportunities. When your support and marketing live side by side, every interaction becomes a chance to deepen loyalty and drive growth.

As the CRM purpose built for B2C, Klaviyo brings service and marketing together into one platform where brands can:

• Build a personalized, on-site destination for self-service with Customer Hub.
• Resolve issues, recommend products, and convert visitors into buyers with K:AI Customer Agent.
• Resolve simple and complex issues across multiple channels with Klaviyo Helpdesk.

With Klaviyo Service, BFCM customer service isn’t a cost center. It’s your new revenue driver.