It’s crunch time. Our Head of Customer Success Audrey Weber and Customer Success Manager Ryan Shirk dug into what retailers are really focused on heading into Black Friday and Cyber Monday — and how automation and AI can make a difference right now.
Check out the webinar replay or follow the conversation to learn:
- What’s top of mind for CX and operations teams in the final stretch before BFCM
- Practical, last-minute ways AI can streamline service and reduce chaos
- Tactics to set your team up for a smoother holiday season
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Sam Chandler: To get us started, Audrey, you have a little bit of experience in a whole bunch of things. So, from the world of retail and ecommerce to the world of customer experience and customer success, in your mind right now, what is the single biggest thing that CX leaders should be thinking about? Like, what keeps you up at night right now?
Audrey Weber: A lot of things. So given it's the most exciting time of year, in terms of, in terms of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, I mean, what would what keeps me up is making sure that the the the business has the capacity and capability to serve the influx of existing and new customers coming to, coming to the business, whether it's, a website or physical retailer.
We wanna make sure that we have, the, the inventory, the, like, website optimization, and and, obviously, from a Kustomer experience standpoint, the, the the agents, human or otherwise, are equipped to best serve those customers because, let's face it, today's promo customers are your future loyal Kustomer base if managed correctly. So, this is the time to really roll out the red carpet and make it easy and exciting for your customers and your customer facing teams.
So that's yeah. Capacity, capability, those are the things that are keeping me up.
And, I guess, making sure all of the different permutations of the customer journey are present and accounted for, and that we've got responses and a path to a successful outcome regardless of kind of what the Kustomer hits, as a part of their journey.
Sam Chandler: Yeah. Absolutely. So, you mentioned volume. Put a pin in that because I'm gonna come back to that. I want to talk about WISMO real quick. WISMO, where is my order? That is usually what I hear about, that and policy changes, especially as it pertains to capacity and volume.
So, thinking about that as, like, the kind of what is top of mind for a lot of folks and, policy questions that come around that, is that where the queue is bottlenecking right now?
Audrey Weber: I have started getting Black Friday deals, I think about two weeks ago. So yeah, ‘where's my order?’ Definitely relevant. I think ‘where's my tracking number?’ ‘What's the return policy?’ ‘When am I getting my refund?’ Those I think are all kind of similar, high volume, pretty predictable, contact drivers that are the low hanging fruit, definitely bottlenecking systems.
And, honestly, as we go deeper into the holiday season, also burning out your agents if you're not, if you have human agents addressing those things.
Sam Chandler: You bring up a good point. And, Ryan, that was something I wanted to ask you about is, we think about, WISMO first as it as it comes to, deploying AI and really getting the the biggest bang for your buck.
Are there any of those other scenarios that we just talked about that smaller agent teams and human teams aren't thinking about, or, is WISMO really the best place to get your your bang for your buck this close to the holiday season?
Ryan Shirk: Obviously, WISMO is a huge one in retail, and it absolutely should be looked at in terms of automation. But it does require an integration into your back end systems. Whether it's your OMS or a third party carrier, there is an integration aspect to it. So, if you're going to do that, obviously, make sure you have the runway to do that and the capabilities to do that.
Another big one, as we go into the holiday is ‘in stock’. So that's another big volume driver. Customers, just interacting with contact centers, asking about products. Are they in stock? Is this actually going to be delivered in time for the holiday, kind of thing. So that also obviously would require an integration into, like, your product catalog.
Some of the other items, and Audrey touched on it a little bit, in terms of promotions already coming out - those Black Friday, Cyber Monday promotions and deals, that are coming out, that is all stuff that is set early on, and it's stuff that's static.So, retailers already know what their deals are going to be on Black Friday, Cyber Monday. And so those are very easy static data pieces that can be built into AI. And there's a very high degree of confidence that those answers that AI provides would be accurate, because it's not calling out the third party systems.
It's just defining what the promotions are and then allowing AI to do its thing.
Sam Chandler: Yeah. I love that. That is such a good point. We think about using AI for customer facing things and agents all the time, but really leveraging the data that you have ahead of time is brilliant.
So I want to shift gears a little bit. We've been talking about promotions and the fact that we're already getting those things. I think we're making up new, WISMO tags and abbreviations there. I can't wait to see the really long thread of where is my tracking number and where is my order status. But let's shift gears a little bit from the policy confusion and where's my order into fraud.
So as the holiday season goes forward, then we have these questions about, securing your gift card policies and managing returns fraud, things like that. What are the highest stake operational priorities right now? Is it something like that, or is there something, Audrey, that maybe, CX leaders and retail leaders aren't thinking about right now?
Audrey Weber: Different businesses are going to have different levels of exposure to shrinkage. And I think if we take a step back from that, consistent, reliable communication around, policies, new insights or trends that are kind of developing during the season, whether it's, a new type of fraud or different a body of contacts that look maybe a little suspicious, promotion changes, shipping delays.
I think, like, beyond fraud, it's really around making sure that the communication that's happening between your marketing teams and your shipping teams and your customer support teams are consistent. And as dynamics change throughout the season, there is a kind of reliable closed loop of communication and a repository of assets that your customer facing teams can access to know, okay.
This is what's changing. This is why, and then this is how I communicate that to my customer.
Sam Chandler: Love that. Central repositories - they don't get as much love as they deserve. They really don't.
Audrey Weber: Not sexy, but super critical.
Sam Chandler: You touch on a lot of things that remind me of a very fancy word, and that is nuance. So these types of issues are nuanced. And, you mentioned, new types of fraud, things that haven't even been identified yet or being able to kind of put those patterns together.
I think about the fact that AI gets this bad rep for not being able to deal with nuance well. So I would love to hear your take on that. Is there a way that CX teams can use AI to basically protect that revenue and better catch these complex fraud issues, without slowing down the legitimate customer experience?
Ryan Shirk: So, circling back to my first point about static data. So, a return policy is static. Right? it's a it's a black and white. Like, this is our policy. Something that AI is very good at handling, right, because it's static. It takes the emotion out of it, from a human agent, clearly defines decision criteria and allows the AI to to really evaluate the situation. We all know in situations like this, there's gray areas.
And so that is why, we have this concept of human in the loop where, an AI can be evaluating a situation or specifically a return, and trying to see if it's valid, or if it's potential fraud, risk. And then the AI has a clear path to escalate to a human if there needs to be intervention
So, highly recommend building that into your AI. So, allowing AI to sort of run through the black and whites of the return policy. And then if there are areas of gray or that need more review, that there's an easy path for escalation.
Sam Chandler: To me, it doesn't sound like it's so much about nuance, but about trust. That's what I'm hearing when you're mentioning that.
Kinda switching gears a little bit. Beyond WISMO, Audrey, I'd love to hear, for the CX leaders that are making these final checklists, getting their ducks in a row, making a list, checking it twice, all those fun things - what is one thing every year that gets overlooked that CX leaders really should think about planning for now before everything gets crazy?
Audrey Weber: I think it's managing change. Let's face it: Promo season is, like, two months long, potentially longer, and promotions are gonna hit differently. Shipping delays are going to come up. An item that is way hotter or not as hot [as expected]. And, those different promotional levers are gonna be kind of pushed and pulled throughout. So the ability to really react to those changes and make and were that there is, consistent, consistent communication and the ability to kind of reorchestrate the customer journey in real time when those different changes happen.
And then, on top of that, ensure that the seamless experience that you planned for prior to the season starting, you can apply to these new customer journeys that come from the different dynamics changing throughout the season. So I think, it's really ensuring that the communication loop, your cross functional communication loop is in play.
I think Ryan mentioned, like, pressure testing that to make sure that, okay, we think this works, but does this really work when the, when the going gets tough? And then, really focusing on okay. Now that we've pressure tested these changes, what can I do to just ensure that this works at scale, employing automation and AI to, like, address those things that are gonna be high volume kind of static knowns as Ryan said? And then, continuing to pump up your team.
I think, it's change fatigue is real, especially during this season. And I think with AI and automation in play, it's even more important that when a customer is engaging with a human, that there's just a real kind of authentic, real authentic human connection there and making sure that your team is ready to kind of deliver that is going to throughout the entirety of the season is also gonna be crucial.
Sam Chandler: Yeah. Audrey, you just reminded me of, my favorite Mike Tyson quote, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” So everything has to be changeable. Everything has to be flexible. And, if you're planning in a straight line of a customer journey, then you better get ready to get punched in the face because that's just what's gotta happen.
Audrey Weber: Right.
Sam Chandler: Ryan, how can thinking through change management and taking care of your human agents is really key during this upcoming rush - how can AI best help with things like that?
Ryan Shirk: From a tactical level, I think, taking a look at last year's Black Friday, Cyber Monday volume, the holiday volume, and adjust for this year's trends, will sort of preemptively allow you to identify, failure points within your tech stack and ensure proper rate limits are in place.
And so this is a way that you can obviously support your agents in and preemptively making sure that there's not gonna be any issues with the technology that they're using. Leveraging AI to set up thresholds for alerts, whether, if you're starting to hit some of those thresholds so that you can, practically adjust on the fly.
And then, back to the point of static. So building in static content into things like Copilot, for giving agents tools to be able to leverage during this time and just communicating to the agents that, the use cases that we have built into this AI is based on static data, and there's a very, very high degree of confidence that we have in these answers. You should feel good about the answers that the tools the AI is giving you. And, and so you should feel confident in leveraging these tools.
Sam Chandler: I love that. What's really interesting is that, we talked about being able to manage change and being flexible, and yet you also mentioned taking advantage of static resources that can be really helpful.I love this balance of being able to change, but also knowing that you can, take solace in the routine things that should not change. I love that.
So, we're about seventy two hours away from when this rush begins. I know Black Friday is, not for another couple of weeks, but we're about to enter the time where most CX queues really start lighting up. So to kind of wrap this up, tie a beautiful bow on this gift that y'all are giving to CX organizations out there in the world, what in one sentence is the biggest action item key takeaway that CX leaders should be thinking about in this seventy two hours ahead of this rush? Audrey, you go first.
Audrey Weber: I don't know that I can put it in one sentence, but I well, maybe a run on: Triple check your customer workflows and make sure all of your communication channels and your rep training reflect that, and then I think and publicize how, when, and where your contingency plans, are, should something need to change.
Sam Chandler: Ryan, how about you?
Ryan Shirk: AI can become very complex quickly. Being that that we're right around the corner, focus on the things that are low hanging fruit, the things that you can control. If that's not back end integrations at this point, if that needs to wait, then that's fine. But there's things that you can do today, with that static data sets that you have that can help augment agents. And then, as I mentioned before, giving the agents confidence in these tools and really explain to them, this is all based on static data we have, so if you leverage these tools, you can be confident it's giving you the right information at the right time.
So yeah. So I would say, there's again, AI can be very complex, but there's, there's a lot of low hanging fruit, based on static data that's in platforms today, that you can leverage, as a quick phase one. And then, as you mature in your AI journey, is where you kinda get into these third party integrations.
Sam Chandler: I love that. Don't be afraid to try it out. That's what I'm hearing.
So with that, I'm Sam Chandler, Audrey Weber, Ryan Shirk. We make up the Kustomer CS team along with our awesome colleagues, and we can't wait to talk to you about the holiday rush or about your next AI journey. So thank you very much, and we look forward to the next one.
Closing thoughts
With just days left before the holiday rush, CX leaders must focus on readiness, flexibility, and communication. Kustomer’s Audrey Weber and Ryan Shirk emphasize triple-checking workflows, ensuring clear policies across all teams, and using AI to automate predictable inquiries like “Where is my order?” They advise leveraging static data—like promotions and return policies—to empower agents with accurate information while preparing for real-time adjustments as issues arise.
The key takeaway: balance agility with preparedness by using AI to handle high-volume, routine tasks, freeing agents to deliver authentic, human interactions during the busiest—and most critical—time of the year.
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