Cyber Week, the five-day shopping period covering Black Friday and Cyber Monday, is one of the busiest times of the year for enterprises—and for their communications providers too. Last year, the U.S. saw a spike in online sales driving $41.1 billion in revenue[1], up 8.2% YoY. Behind the scenes, Bandwidth delivered 1.3 billion messages[2] over Cyber Week 2024, powering critical conversions with targeted outreach, promotional offers, and sales support.
However, the unsung hero of Cyber Week is the enterprise contact center. As sales rise, so do the opportunities for customer concerns, complaints, and returns. In an often under-appreciated statistic, enterprise contact centers see a surge in their voice traffic during the final months of the year, peaking during the November to January holiday season.
Following Black Friday and the holiday rush, contact centers must focus on efficiently managing the surge in post-purchase inquiries, retaining customers, and gathering insights for future strategy. And as the U.S. holiday shopping season is expected to bring in $253.4 billion in online sales this year, up 5.3% year-over-year[3], contact centers need to start buckling down and prepare for another influx of customer requests.
Here are some strategies to consider:
1. Test your network resiliency
Before the holiday surge begins, evaluate your network resiliency and conduct end-to-end testing to ensure your communications infrastructure can handle peak volumes. Validate your voice, messaging, and API endpoints under heavy load, and confirm that your disaster recovery and failover plans are in place. Network resiliency testing not only avoids downtime, but also protects customer trust when you can least afford disruption.
2. Scale support capacity in advance
Begin scaling your support team in advance with ‘holiday hires’ to prepare for the expected increase during the winter months, and to cover shifts as more PTO requests come in around the holidays. Consider onboarding these hires now so that they’re appropriately trained and ready to handle requests when the influx hits.
3. Optimize self-service
Businesses are implementing or updating self-service portals, chatbots, and help centers that allow customers to find answers to common questions on their own. This deflects repetitive inquiries and frees agents to focus on resolving higher-value, complex issues. A strong self-service foundation can significantly improve satisfaction while controlling costs.
4. Make support accessible on every channel
While voice remains the most used channel for contacting customer support, channel preferences are changing with email, chat, and social media on the rise (ICMI). Invest in an omnichannel strategy that enables your team to meet customers where they are, while maintaining a unified view of every interaction. This not only speeds up resolution times but also ensures a more personalized experience.
5. Leverage AI and automation
Adobe predicts AI-assisted online shopping to grow 520% during the 2025 US holiday season[3], bolstered by customers using AI for research ahead of purchases, recommendations, deal finding, and gift inspiration. Your contact center should evaluate how AI can help equally service the demand generated by these requests. For example, smart routing can be used to prioritize urgent tickets while AI chatbots or voice bots handle easy, more routine requests (such as tracking orders or processing returns). This helps agents stay focused on the biggest-impact interactions.
6. Capture insights for next year
By analyzing the types of inquiries, response times, and customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) from the holiday season, companies can identify weaknesses in the customer journey. These insights can inform measurable goals, like reducing next year’s ticket volume or improving first-contact resolution. Prepare as much as you can for this year, and collect metrics that will support advanced initiatives and budget requests as you look to continue scaling in 2026 and beyond.
Conclusion
Every interaction counts during Cyber Week and enterprises that align with a partner capable of handling enterprise-grade communications gain a real competitive edge. Peak shopping seasons represent both a stress test and an opportunity for contact centers. Those that plan ahead with scalable infrastructure, omnichannel accessibility, and AI-enhanced support not only survive the rush—they turn it into a differentiator.
With Bandwidth powering your voice and message delivery, your team can trust that customers will always be connected, supported, and heard no matter how high the holiday traffic climbs. Our network is engineered for reliability, agility, and intelligence, so your contact center can stay focused on what matters most: delivering exceptional customer experiences all season long.
See an example of how Attentive AI relies on Bandwidth’s solutions to power customer comms for 8000 household brands during critical periods like Cyber Week.
[1] – Cyber Monday Hits Record $13.3 Billion in Online Spending with Majority of Sales Driven by Mobile, News.Adobe.com
[2] – Bandwidth’s LinkedIn post
[3] – Adobe predicts AI-assisted online shopping to grow 520% during the 2025 US holiday season, TechCrunch
