Using call-volume patterns to plan seasonal coverage, training, and after-hours support for Retail CX teams.
During the 2025 holiday peak, retail call volume rose 70% from the September baseline while Flip’s automation rate, CSAT, and handle time held steady. 24% of holiday calls came in after hours, mostly about existing orders, and 93% of those shoppers didn’t need to call back within 24 hours. Order-status and stock questions carry the most volume and are the easiest calls to automate with voice AI.
Flip is a conversational AI platform for retail, healthcare, and transportation brands that automates customer calls. Flip offers voice AI as an agent that answers and resolves calls for retail and ecommerce customer service teams. The data below comes from Flip’s retail brands.
How much does retail call volume rise during the holidays?
Call volume spikes during the holidays. The right Voice AI can absorb phone volume while keeping customer satisfaction high.
Automation rate, AI CSAT, and AI Handle time in comparison to Call Volume during the holiday season. September 2025 is the baseline and each increase is based off the September number.
Huge call spike? No problem here. Even as retail holiday call volume increased 70%, Flip’s Automation Rate, CSAT, and Handle Time held steady. A retail AI expert can not only absorb additional holiday call volume, but handle it with ease, working through long call queues effectively while maintaining a positive experience for the customer.ย
Which holiday calls are the easiest to automate with AI?
The most common call intents during peak holiday season are the easiest to automate and resolve by AI. The quadrant visualization helps retail brands visualize where CX staff should prioritize training.
Holiday call intents plotted by share of call volume and automation rate. Each dot represents a call intent. Order-status and stock check calls sit highest on both. Phone order and promo code calls sit lower on automation.
What customers call about during the holidays. Call intents ranked by percent share of all holiday calls.
Order-status and stock questions carry the highest share of call volume and the highest automation rates, which is great news for CX teams with an AI agent. The holidays also see a rise in more nuanced requests or changes, which is where human team members shine.ย Customer service staff report feeling less overwhelmed when supplemented with a CX AI solution, since they’re not trying to rush through a never-ending call queue of repetitive requests.
Twelve call intents carried half of all holiday phone volume. Order-status and stock check calls hold the highest automation rates. Customers still prefer a person for phone order and promo code conversations, and more often call during the day for them.ย
Flip handling the routine โWhere is my order?โ calls have freed the Ruggable CX team to lean into concierge and revenue-driving services, like answering home styling and design questions.ย Hammit mentioned a similar experience for their team:ย Flip’s CX AI took over the simple high-volume phone and chat requests, leaving Hammitt’s concierge team more time for complex, high-touch conversations representative of their luxury brand. That shift also eased day-to-day pressure on the team.
What share of holiday calls come in after hours?
Inbound call volume peaks between 10am and 1pm (in the brand’s own timezone) during the holiday season, as represented by this heat map.
Nearly 1 in 4 holiday calls come in after hours, often about order changes.
Across Flip’s retail brands, 24% of holiday calls arrived outside of standard 9am-6pm working hours in the brand’s own timezone, and volume decreased steadily after 5pm. After-hours calls still doubled from early fall to the holiday peak in correlation with overall call volume increase.ย
After-hours callers are less likely to place a new order and more likely to call about an existing one: only about 18% of order-by-phone intents were logged after hours. This aligns with earlier data regarding intent automation and with Gartner survey data: 54% of customers surveyed trust human agents more than AI for product or service recommendations. Instead, customers are more likely to track existing orders or place a time-sensitive order change or cancellation. If an order is going out the next day, a change that evening can be a simple fix (rather than a complex one should the brand not have 24/7 phone and chat lines). The data shows that Flipโs AI agent handles 82% more calls on its own after hours compared to midday during the holiday season.
Does an AI agent improve the after-hours customer experience?
The power of automation for after-hours calls: availability leads to a positive experience.
When the phone is answered after-hours by an AI agent, customers report a more positive experience. For the most common after-hours requests, calls answered on the spot by Flip’s AI scored 4.0 out of 5 in AI CSAT. (The same requests scored 3.4 when the call was transferred to the brand’s line and no one answered.) The very availability of an AI agent to handle a call is positive, and that Flip can resolve requests further enhances the experience.ย ย
Those calls stay resolved: 93% of shoppers didn’t need to call back about the same issue in 24 hours. The most common after-hours calls (stock checks, order status, store hours and where’s-my-order calls (94-98% of calls)) didn’t need a callback at all.ย
Useful takeaways for your CX team:
- After Hours Calls can rely on automation: customers aren’t buying, but are requesting urgent order changes.
- Every after-hours call resolved by AI is one fewer call in tomorrow’s queue. At Christmas-week automation levels, that adds up to roughly a quarter fewer next-day callbacks, right when your team is stretched thinnest.
- Before the holidays, check that your order information is syncing accurately so that Flip’s voice AI agent can report the most accurate information and make changes in real-time.
- Record holiday shipping messages or weather delays so that callers’ concerns and expectations are eased immediately.
How does voice AI help with seasonal hires and brand voice consistency?
A safety net for seasonal hires: brand voice consistency and “always on.”
Onboarding seasonal agents quickly is one of the hardest parts of holiday planning for CX teams.ย New hires are thrust into the busiest time of year, learning products and policies as they juggle high-pressure calls. The right voice AI provides quality assurance: it’s already trained in the product in the brand voice. Faster ramp-up is the most-cited training need for contact centers.ย
Retail brands highlight that Flipโs routing and IVR features are used as a safety net for under-trained agents. Reducing potential missteps for new hires still learning during the busiest, high-pressure time of the year relieves stress for employees and guarantees a more consistent and positive experience for the customer.
According to Liquid I.V. โWe didnโt want a traditional IVR [Interactive Voice Response]. We wanted something where we could embed a bit more playfulness into our phone line and make it a real extension of the brand voice weโd built across social media, email, chat, and other channels.โ
Both Liquid I.V. and Ruggable mentioned that high call volume put CX teams’ high standard of customer service at risk, since they were spread thin across channels. With a conversational AI solution, brand voice consistency across CX now maintains a higher standard of service and drives revenue for the brand. E-commerce platform integrations with existing tools (e.g. Shopify, Gorgias, OrderGroove, Zendesk) further enhance the personalized, streamlined experience for customers. See Flip’s integrations.
How does voice AI favor resolution over human handoff?
It routes smartly, favoring resolution rather than simply transferring to a human agent, meaning more call volume is absorbed and new staff aren’t overwhelmed with an onslaught of calls.
What should you look for in a retail voice AI partner?
The right Conversational AI/Voice AI partner takes pressure off new or seasonal employees and leads to a more consistent brand experience for customers:
- It’s already trained to know your brand voice and maintains consistency with every additional product or operational iteration.
- It stays current; integrations keep product and order information in sync, and updates take effect in real time.
| What to look for | Why it matters during the holidays |
| Ecommerce integrations (Shopify, Gorgias, OrderGroove, Zendesk) | Order status and changes stay accurate in real time |
| Resolution before transfer | More volume absorbed, fewer handoffs to a stretched team |
| 24/7 phone coverage | Nearly 1 in 4 holiday calls arrive after hours |
| Pre-trained brand voice and retail intents | Consistent service from the first call, even with seasonal hires |
| An insights dashboard everyone can read | Intents, feedback, and CSAT without routing questions through IT |
| Fast launch | No-code voice AI that launches in days, not through a lengthy rollout |
Will retailers hire fewer seasonal and overseas agents in 2026?
Fewer seasonal and overseas hires predicted for holiday 2026.
As we mentioned in our Holiday seasonal hiring post,ย CX teams mention the same staffing concerns again and again while planning for the holiday season:ย
- holiday hours and coverage (39% of planning conversations)
- seasonal hiring and training (26% of planning conversations)
- reducing seasonal headcount (18% of planning conversations)
- employment questions (17% of planning conversations)
Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that holiday hiring is getting โsmaller and more surgicalโ, forecasting 450,000 US retail seasonal hires in Q4 2026 โ down from 462,000 last year, itself the weakest season in sixteen years, and well below the 543,000 added in Q4 2024.
Some brands are going further and building AI into their staffing plans. By letting a voice AI partner absorb a share of call volume, they’re reducing seasonal overseas headcount ahead of time, and treating it as a planned cost-reduction strategy rather than a temporary stopgap.
How much can voice AI cut holiday call center costs?
Human agent cost versus Flip cost, by month.
As holiday volume climbed, so did savings: using median hourly wage for customer reps as a guide, brands paid on average 43% less in November and 45% less in December than they would have paid agents for the same calls.
How can CX teams use call data to plan for the holidays?
Plan holiday campaigns with your CX data
These staffing concerns become easier to manage when CX leaders plan from their brands’ own call data in conjunction with a retail expert. Liquid I.V. highlighted the importance of a CX AI partner integrating with Liquid I.V.’s existing tech stack, plus pre-built intents and retail industry expertise. A retail CX AI expert can offer strategic initiatives like additional workflows, suggestions for automated messages, and integration suggestions.
Use CX insights for product feedback, operational planning
For Liquid I.V., CX platform insights offer a valuable product feedback loop, surfacing flavor complaints, out-of-stock trends, and customer sentiment from call transcripts.
Call-density heat maps and after-hours data help Ruggable evaluate staffing coverage and daily/hourly phone availability. With CX voice AI, Ruggable now answers every call, day or night, with an AI agent that customers often mistake for a person
Hammitt‘s team appreciates a clear and intuitive insights dashboard, which goes beyond number of calls and into caller intents, feedback, CSAT score, and more. Rather than routing every question through IT, anyone from Hammitt’s team can look at the same data directly.
Your Retail CX holiday staffing checklist:
- Staff for about 2x normal live-agent demand from Dec 1 through Dec 19, with volume rising beginning November 1st.
- The right AI partner knows your brand’s voice, products, and operational policies, which can ease seasonal onboarding pressure and maintain consistency and high standards across channels.
- Double check that order data is up-to-date and synced with integration partners so that your voice AI can handle after-hours order questions, changes, and cancellations.
- The most common call intents during peak holiday season are the easiest to automate and resolve by AI. Order-status and stock questions carry the highest share of call volume and the highest automation rates for retail brands, while order-by-phone overwhelmingly favored a human touch.
- After-hours calls are overwhelmingly order changers, while product ordering peaks during the day along with higher call volume overall.
- Keep seasonal staff through early January for the returns wave.
The holidays will always be busy. With the right data and an AI agent covering the gaps, they don’t have to be chaotic.
Frequently asked questions
When should retailers start staffing for holiday call peaks?
Volume starts rising around November 1. The heaviest period in Flip’s data runs from December 1 through December 19, when retailers should plan for about 2x normal live-agent demand.
What retail calls can voice AI automate during the holidays?
Order status, stock checks, and store hours have the highest automation rates. Order changes and cancellations are common after hours. Phone orders and promo code calls are better handled by a person.
Can voice AI handle peak holiday call volume?
In Flip’s retail data, call volume rose 70% from the September 2025 baseline while automation rate, AI CSAT, and handle time held steady.
Do customers like AI-answered calls after hours?
Calls answered on the spot by Flip’s AI scored 4.0 out of 5 in AI CSAT, compared with 3.4 when the call was transferred to a line no one answered.
How much can voice AI reduce holiday call center costs?
Flip’s retail brands paid on average 43% less in November and 45% less in December than they would have paid agents for the same calls.
Sources
- Challenger, Gray & Christmas: โ2026 Holiday Hiring Outlook: After Lowest Season Since 2008, Will Retailers Stock Up on Workers?โ
- The Manila Times: โIT-BPM Revenue Growth Seen Outpacing Job Creationโ
- Retail Dive: โHoliday Hiring Is Getting โSmaller and More Surgicalโโ
- ProcedureFlow: โThe State of Contact Center Trainingโ
- Flip: โRetail CX AI Strategy for the Holidaysโ
- Flip: โHoliday Season Prep: Retail Brandsโ Top Considerations for CX Planning and Seasonal Hiringโ
- Flip: โHow Hammitt Streamlined Its White-Glove Customer Service With Flip CX AIโ
- Flip: โResolution Over Deflection: How Ruggable Turned Its Phone Line Into a 24/7, On-Brand Channel With Flipโ
- Flip: โLiquid I.V. x Flip: True CX AI Partnership From 24/7 Phones to Super Bowl Campaignsโ
- Flip: โIntegrationsโ
