Peak season
E-Commerce & Einzelhandel
Nearshoring
Outsourcing
Die Peak Season setzt alle Bereiche einer E-Commerce-Kundenservice-Operation gleichzeitig unter Druck.
Das Kontaktvolumen steigt. Neue Mitarbeitende kommen ins Team. Erfahrene Mitarbeitende investieren mehr Zeit in deren Unterstützung. Die Backoffice-Warteschlangen wachsen. Gleichzeitig erwarten Kund schnellere Antworten – genau dann, wenn der operative Spielraum für Fehler kleiner wird.
Nach mehr als 16 Jahren Erfahrung im Management von Kundenservice-Operationen, darunter zahlreiche Peak Seasons für E-Commerce- und Retail-Kunden, sehen wir immer wieder dasselbe Muster: Die Peak Season schafft selten operative Schwachstellen. Sie macht sichtbar, was bereits vorher nicht optimal funktioniert hat.
Lange Warteschlangen, sinkende First Contact Resolution (FCR) oder verfehlte Service Level Agreements (SLAs) sind meist nur Symptome. Die eigentlichen Ursachen liegen häufig Wochen oder sogar Monate zurück – im Forecasting, Recruiting, Training, Workforce Planning, Knowledge Management oder im Prozessdesign.
Wie sieht der Druck der Peak Season in der Praxis aus?
Peak Season bedeutet nicht, dass alle Bereiche einer Kundenservice-Operation im gleichen Tempo wachsen.
In einem von Axendi betreuten E-Commerce- und Retail-Projekt stieg das Kontaktvolumen während der Peak Season 2023 über verschiedene Kanäle hinweg deutlich an:
- E-Mail-Anfragen stiegen um 352 % – von 8.727 im Juli auf 39.460 im Dezember.
- Chat-Interaktionen stiegen um 2.099 % – von 289 im April auf 6.356 im Dezember.
- Eingehende Anrufe stiegen um 324 % – von 24.165 im Mai auf 102.453 im Dezember.
Gleichzeitig wurde das Kundenservice-Team entsprechend der steigenden Nachfrage erweitert.
Deshalb lässt sich die Vorbereitung auf die Peak Season nicht auf eine einzige Frage reduzieren:
Wie viele zusätzliche Agents brauchen wir?
Kanäle, Prozesse und Kundenbedürfnisse entwickeln sich unterschiedlich. Die Kundenservice-Operation muss diese Veränderungen gleichzeitig auffangen können.
Aus unserer Erfahrung gibt es acht operative Schwachstellen, die bei der Vorbereitung auf Nachfragespitzen besonders häufig sichtbar werden.
Die Rekrutierung beginnt zu spät
Eine der häufigsten operativen Schwachstellen während Peak Seasons ist nicht die Rekrutierung selbst, sondern der Zeitpunkt, zu dem sie beginnt.
Viele Unternehmen starten die Einstellung neuer Service-Mitarbeitender erst dann, wenn die Kundennachfrage bereits deutlich steigt. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt bleibt oft nicht mehr genügend Zeit, neue Mitarbeitende zu rekrutieren, einzuarbeiten und auf die selbstständige Bearbeitung von Kundenanfragen vorzubereiten, bevor das Kontaktvolumen seinen Höhepunkt erreicht.
Die Rekrutierung ist nur der erste Schritt. Neue Mitarbeitende müssen zunächst das Onboarding, Schulungen, den Systemzugang, die Einarbeitung unter Anleitung sowie die Kompetenzvalidierung durchlaufen. Bis dahin erhöhen sie die operative Kapazität nicht, sondern benötigen Unterstützung durch erfahrene Mitarbeitende, Teamleiter und Trainer.
Im E-Commerce ist die saisonale Personalgewinnung besonders anspruchsvoll. Vor dem Black Friday und dem Weihnachtsgeschäft konkurrieren zahlreiche Unternehmen um dieselben Fachkräfte. Bereits eine Verzögerung von wenigen Wochen kann die verfügbare Zeit erheblich verkürzen, um ein stabiles und leistungsfähiges Team aufzubauen.
Was kann schiefgehen?
Die Rekrutierung beginnt erst als Reaktion auf steigende Nachfrage, anstatt Monate im Voraus geplant zu werden. Unternehmen messen den Erfolg an der Zahl der eingestellten Mitarbeitenden und nicht daran, wie viele zum Beginn der Peak Season vollständig einsatzbereit sind.
Operative Auswirkungen
Das Unternehmen startet in die umsatzstärkste Phase mit einem größeren Team, jedoch ohne die erwartete produktive Kapazität. Erfahrene Mitarbeitende verbringen mehr Zeit mit der Einarbeitung und Unterstützung neuer Kolleginnen und Kollegen, wodurch ihre eigene Verfügbarkeit für die Kundenbetreuung sinkt. Die Folge sind längere Wartezeiten, steigende Reaktionszeiten und eine schlechtere Customer Experience – trotz höherer Personalstärke.
Productivity doesn’t scale at the same pace as the team
Adding advisors is only one part of scaling customer service. The surrounding operational structure must grow as well.
Larger teams require additional team leaders, quality specialists, trainers, workforce planners and knowledge support. Without these functions, operational complexity increases faster than the organization’s ability to manage it.
This imbalance often explains why service levels fail to improve even after significant recruitment efforts.
As more advisors join the operation, consultation requests increase, quality monitoring requires more resources, and supervisors spend more time solving operational issues instead of proactively managing performance.
The organization has more people—but not necessarily more capacity.
What goes wrong
Frontline recruitment expands while leadership, quality assurance and operational support remain largely unchanged.
Operational impact
Average handling times remain high, escalations increase and experienced employees become the operational bottleneck instead of the customer demand itself.
Training is limited when it matters most
When recruitment starts later than planned, training is often the first activity to be compressed.
This may seem like a practical solution because advisors become available sooner. In reality, the operational cost appears only after they begin serving customers.
Peak season creates different customer enquiries than those handled during normal operations. Delivery delays, promotion rules, payment issues, returns, stock shortages and system incidents require advisors to make fast, confident decisions under pressure. Without sufficient preparation, they spend longer searching for information, escalate more cases and provide inconsistent answers.
What goes wrong
Training focuses on getting advisors into production quickly rather than preparing them for the situations they are most likely to face during peak season.
Operational impact
Consultation volumes increase, handling times grow, First Contact Resolution declines and customers receive inconsistent experiences across channels.
The operation optimizes speed instead of resolution
As queues grow, the natural reaction is to reduce Average Handling Time (AHT).
While shorter interactions may appear to improve productivity, they do not necessarily solve more customer problems.
When advisors rush conversations, transfer cases unnecessarily or provide incomplete answers, customers often need to contact the company again. The operation becomes busier without becoming more effective.
What goes wrong
Operational decisions prioritise interaction speed instead of customer outcomes, with too much focus on AHT and too little attention to First Contact Resolution, repeat contacts and customer effort.
Operational impact
Queues continue growing even though advisors are handling more interactions. Customer satisfaction declines while operational costs increase.
Back-office processes become the hidden bottleneck
Customer service can only resolve issues that the wider organisation is able to complete.
Refunds, complaints, payment verification, order corrections and warehouse requests often depend on teams outside the contact centre. If those processes fail to scale during peak season, advisors continue accepting contacts but cannot deliver outcomes.
Customers then make additional enquiries simply to check the status of their existing case.
What goes wrong
The organisation expands customer-facing capacity without increasing the capacity of back-office processes that complete customer requests.
Operational impact
Open cases accumulate, resolution times increase and customers generate additional demand through repeat contacts, even when the contact centre is performing well.
Automation is expected to fix poorly designed processes
Automation can significantly reduce repetitive work during peak season. AI chatbots, voicebots, agent-assist solutions and workflow automation help organisations improve efficiency and absorb higher contact volumes.
However, technology only performs as well as the processes behind it.
If policies are unclear, knowledge is outdated or escalation paths are poorly designed, automation simply reproduces those weaknesses at greater scale.
What goes wrong
Technology is implemented without sufficient attention to process design, knowledge quality, customer journeys or human escalation paths.
Operational impact
Customers abandon self-service, repeat information across multiple channels and eventually require advisor support, increasing rather than reducing operational demand.
Staffing plans assume perfect attendance
Even the best workforce plan can quickly become ineffective when sickness, unexpected absences or employee turnover reduce available capacity.
During peak season, organisations have very little operational flexibility. Losing even a small number of experienced advisors can have a disproportionate impact, particularly when specialist knowledge is concentrated within a few individuals.
Operational resilience requires more than filling every planned shift. It requires contingency planning, cross-trained employees and the ability to quickly reallocate experienced advisors where they create the greatest business value.
What goes wrong
Workforce planning assumes full attendance and provides little contingency for unexpected absences or operational disruption.
Operational impact
A manageable increase in customer demand quickly develops into an operational crisis because there is insufficient resilience built into the workforce plan.
Outsourcing begins after the crisis has already started
Many organisations consider outsourcing only after internal operations have become overwhelmed.
By that stage, service levels have already deteriorated and customers are experiencing longer waiting times.
However, outsourcing is not an emergency solution. A partner still requires time to understand processes, integrate systems, recruit advisors, transfer knowledge and establish governance.
The organisations that benefit most from outsourcing treat it as part of their peak-season strategy rather than a last-minute rescue plan.
What goes wrong
External support is sought only after performance has already declined, leaving insufficient time for implementation and operational readiness.
Operational impact
Knowledge transfer becomes rushed, responsibilities are unclear and both organisations spend peak season reacting to problems instead of preventing them.
Peak season exposes the operating model
Long queues and missed service levels are rarely the real problem during peak season. They are the visible symptoms of operational gaps that existed long before demand increased.
Late recruitment, compressed training, fragmented planning, overloaded back-office processes, poorly implemented automation and limited operational resilience may appear manageable during normal operations. Under peak conditions, they quickly combine into a much larger operational challenge.
Organisations that consistently deliver excellent customer experience during peak season prepare more than additional capacity. They build an operating model that remains resilient when demand, complexity and customer expectations all increase at the same time.
