Holiday Preparation Checklist

The holidays are the busiest time of year. Many companies bring on temporary staff, take a hard look at how their operations are performing, and plan closures so teams can spend time with family. Use this checklist to review and complete the key items that keep your operations running smoothly through peak season.

Plan for the holiday rush

Service interruption

Review the Action Plan in Case of an Unexpected Platform Issue to understand best practices and suggestions for actions in case of a platform outage

Hiring and training

Onboard seasonal workers early – aim to have them fully trained by the end of October of any year.
Use Gladly Academy to train and certify your new hires (it's free!)
- Support Hero Certificate Course – This is the gold standard training for all Agents and Customer-facing service members who will be using Gladly. You may also use this training to supplement your company-specific training.
- You can choose from many L&D courses on topics such as Customer Service, Customer Experience, Conflict Resolution, Communication, and more.
Set Chat capacity by team. Use per-team messaging capacity overrides to match capacity to experience:
- Give seasonal or new-hire teams a lower Chat capacity than the default, so new Agents aren't overloaded while they ramp up.
- Give your most experienced Agents a higher Chat capacity than the default to increase throughput during peak.
Turn on Team Assist. We recommend every team consider Team Assist for the holidays. It's an AI panel in the Agent workspace that helps Agents find answers and draft replies, so seasonal staff get up to speed faster and your team handles more Conversations during peak.
- Set up Brand Voice first so suggested replies stay on-brand.

Inboxes

Run a quick audit of every Inbox before volume picks up.

Confirm each Inbox's SLA still reflects the response times you want to hold during peak.
Remove users who no longer need access, such as former agents or last season's temporary staff, so routing and reporting stay accurate.
Verify that each Inbox's Entry Points (email addresses, phone numbers, chat and other channels) are still correct and connected to the right Inbox.

Rules

Audit your Rules. Pay special attention to spam and reassignment Rules so emails don't get stuck with offline agents. While you're in there:
- Deactivate Rules you no longer use.
- Combine Rules that do the same or overlapping work.
- Rename Rules with a consistent naming convention so they're easier to search for and troubleshoot when things get busy.
- Need ideas? Browse the Sample Rules Library.
Show customers their Estimated Wait Time (EWT). When waits run long, use a Rule to send an auto-reply with the expected wait, offer email or SMS as an alternative, or escalate calls.
- Start with the Display EWT to the Customer Rule in the Common Rules Library, and see Rule conditions for the available EWT conditions.
If not included, add hyperlinks to your email auto-replies and/or Agent signatures to direct Customers to important FAQ documents or other web pages.
Use Business Hours Rules for email/SMS/social messaging to incorporate holidays by using exceptions. You can have different automated messages go out at any time during the day during business hours.
Consider shortening your Conversation Reopen Window (the default is 24 hours) so more Conversations are treated as new. This may help you manage your backlog.

Workflows

Use Workflow templates to set up common holiday automations quickly:
- The Block After-hours Handoffs template keeps customers from being handed off to agents while your team is closed for the holidays.
- The CSAT template helps you measure customer satisfaction through peak season.
- See What is Workflows? and Workflow Templates.
Use Estimated Wait Time in a Workflow ‘If’ step to branch customers based on the current wait (for example, offering another Channel when waits are long). See the September 2026 release notes.

Voice

Verify your IVR holiday hours if they differ from your regular hours. Make sure your holiday schedule covers the rest of 2026 and all of your 2027 holiday dates.
Update your IVR recording to mention high call volume, if needed.
Consider adding an SMS or voicemail option to your queue IVR for callers on hold. You can set this up yourself, or contact Gladly Support to scope a project with Professional Services.
Put Voice AI at the front of your phone line with Dynamic IVR. Voice AI can handle simple calls on its own and route the rest to agents with context, so agents don't have to start from scratch. See the September 2026 release notes.
Use the Pronunciation Dictionary to teach Voice AI how to say holiday product names and brand names correctly. See Configure AI Voice and Pronunciation.
Take holiday orders and payments over the phone securely with the PCI Pal integration, without pausing call recording. See PCI Pal Overview.
Use Proactive Voice to send bulk messages about shipping delays, carrier changes or delivery status.

Messaging

Make sure auto-throttle is turned on for Chat.
Include alternate Channels, such as SMS or Email, in your Chat throttled message so Customers have somewhere to go when Chat is unavailable.
Turn on Abandoned Chat Detection so Chats that Customers have walked away from close automatically and Agent capacity goes to active customers. See Configure Chat Session (Abandon) Settings.
Add a Priority Boost for chats through People Match if Chats are waiting too long.
Reduce cart abandonment and support revenue by turning on Proactive Chat on your checkout page and/or chat payments.
Consider reducing the auto-end time for messaging, which defaults to 15 minutes. A shorter time routes new messages sooner. When Customers stop responding, open Sessions keep taking up Agent capacity until they end. A shorter auto-end time frees that capacity sooner so Agents can pick up new conversations. Note that this is different from the auto-close setting.
If you use Chat, consider Quick Reply buttons alongside Quick Actions to streamline the Customer experience and customize routing.
Use Proactive SMS to send bulk messages about delays, carrier changes or delivery status.

Drive holiday revenue in Chat

Turn on Proactive Chat on your checkout page to reduce cart abandonment.
Consider Chat payments. Let Customers pay securely inside the Conversation with Chat payments, so a holiday order doesn't have to wait on a callback or a separate checkout. Contact Gladly Support or your Account Manager to turn on Chat payments.
Explore Gladly's agentic commerce capabilities. Gladly AI can help shoppers on your site find and compare products, get recommendations and add items to their cart in the Conversation, while also handling post-purchase questions. With gift shopping at its peak, this helps turn holiday questions into orders. Contact Gladly Support or your Account Manager to learn more and get started.

Email

Review the email setting that returns emails to the same agent, either temporarily or permanently.
Save time by using Rules to apply Topics automatically based on keywords or Entry Points.
Audit your auto-replies to confirm they mention alternate channels like SMS and that all links are clickable.
Review the spam detection toggle in Email settings. Admins can control the built-in email spam detector during high-volume weeks. See the June 2026 release notes.
Use Proactive Email to send bulk messages about delays, carrier changes or delivery status.

Answers and Self-service

Start with last year's peak. Pull the Chat Answer Usage report for last year's holiday season to see which Answers customers relied on most. Use it as your starting list of Answers to update, or at least refresh the language on, before this season.
Close keyword gaps. Pull the Chat Answer Search report and look for search terms that don't match any of your public Answers or help articles. Add those keywords to existing Answers or create new ones, and link holiday search terms (such as Black Friday or Cyber Monday) to your promo or discount Answers.
Use Quick Actions in Chat to get ahead of questions you expect, such as shipping delays, promotions or new product lines. Update them as things change.
Remove extra contact numbers from processes that are fully self-service.
Order the contact options on your website so the most efficient channels, such as email, appear first.
If you don't have one, set up a Help Center so customers can quickly find answers to top holiday questions.

Block abusive or spam messages

Make sure your team knows how to block customers who send spam or inappropriate messages.
Block Chat customers by IP address or email to stop repeat bad actors and spam from tying up your Chat queues. See Blocking disruptive Customers and the March 2026 release notes.
Review the email spam detection toggle (see Email above).

Monitoring trends and volume

Summary Liveboard – Monitor live trends such as agent capacity and SLA attainment.
Topics Liveboard – Monitor the day's trending Topics.
Agents Liveboard – Watch for Away states and more. Filter by channel, status or Focus Time to spot coverage gaps quickly. See Use Liveboards.
Manage agent availability remotely. Managers can set an agent to Away or log them out remotely, which pairs well with watching Away states on the Agents Liveboard. See the November 2025 release notes.
AI Sessions – Monitor Gladly AI activity with filters, grouping and shareable links.
Audit Log – See who changed which settings during peak, and when. This is especially helpful when several admins are making changes at once.

Measuring performance

Daily Trends dashboard – Monitor metrics such as FCR and handle time.
Contact Summary – Get granular data on contact trends.
Agent Summary Glance – Monitor agent performance and workload.
Agent Availability Report – Export agent status data for workforce planning and schedule adherence. See the July 2026 release notes.
Track Estimated Wait Time – EWT is available in Contact Export and Insight Builder, so you can see how long customers actually waited during peak.

Before you leave for the holidays

Close the phones

Set up your IVR so that Customers who call while your team is out for the holidays to hear your greetings and messages during your holiday hours. You can even set up the IVR to have callers leave a voicemail so you can call them back during non-holiday hours.

See How do I close our phones to learn how.

Close Chat

Hide the Chat option on your website for days you are closed and allow Customers to use your self-service options for Chat.

A week before the day(s) you are closed, check the Closed box next to the days you are closed for the week coming up on the Chat configuration page. Click Save when you're done.
As soon as the holiday(s) pass, go back to the Chat configuration page and uncheck the Closed box if you are open on those days.

Block after-hours handoffs

Turn on the Block After-hours Handoffs Workflow template so Gladly AI doesn't hand Customers off to Agents while your team is out. See Workflow Templates.

Set up auto-replies for SMS

Like emails, you can't stop Customers from sending SMS messages, but you can set up an SMS auto-reply to inform them of your holiday hours.

Create a Messaging Answer.
Create a Rule that uses the Messaging Answer you created to send an SMS reply to Customers containing your holiday message/hours.
Be sure to activate this Rule. You can deactivate this Rule when it's no longer needed.

Utilize Business Hours for Messaging Channel
You can utilize Business Hours alongside Rules to customize your messaging based on date and time.

Prepare Gladly AI and App Platform for the holidays

Whether you're leveraging AI or using the App Platform to connect your systems to Gladly, we've put together a quick checklist to help ensure a smooth and seamless holiday season.

Gladly AI peak season tips

AI is your first responder during high-volume periods. Here’s how to keep it running at peak performance:

Update content for the holiday season

Update your holiday returns policies

If you're offering extended holiday return windows, make sure to update your Rules and Answers to reflect these changes. This ensures Customers get accurate info from the start.

If your standard return window will change over the holiday season:

Modify any rules built into Guides or Workflows that evaluate return eligibility
Update any Public Answers that mention the typical return window

Automate your top holiday contact reasons with the Shopify Track Order, Cancel Order and Loop Returns Guide templates (where is my order, cancel my order, return status). See Add Shopify Guide Templates.

Answer gift-shopping questions with Shopify Product Search, which uses live inventory and pricing. See the September 2026 release notes.

Set a Fallback Guide to catch holiday questions that don't match an existing Guide, instead of handing them off to agents. See Set a Fallback Guide.

Scope Guides to specific channels. Run holiday-specific Guides on Chat only, for example, without changing voice or email. See the September 2026 release notes.

Test before peak traffic hits

Have a holiday version of your Gladly Agent. Use versions and A/B testing to try your holiday setup against your current one, then roll back cleanly in January. See Manage Gladly Agent Versions and Set Up A/B Testing.
Use the Simulator to test holiday Guide changes against realistic customer scenarios before you go live. See Simulator Overview and Create and Run Scenarios.

Run and review head of peak

Keep Gladly AI on 24/7. Let AI run 24/7, including outside business hours, to handle common questions while your team is offline.
Know that Self-Healing Responses has your back. Gladly AI automatically retries a response that fails a quality check before handing off, so fewer handoffs reach busy agents. It's on by default, so there's nothing to set up. See the July 2026 and August 2026 release notes.
Review AI Sessions. Use the AI Sessions page to track performance, find Guides and Answers with low resolution, and spot areas to improve before volume spikes. Small updates now can mean fewer escalations later.
Grade holiday sessions at scale with Signals. Write plain-English criteria, such as "quoted the correct holiday return window," and Signals checks your AI sessions against them. See What is Signals? and Signals Best Practices.

App Platform peak season tips

As the holiday season approaches, the Gladly App Platform team is working hard to ensure our systems remain stable, reliable, and ready for increased seasonal activity. Because Gladly relies on many external systems through the App Platform, your own connected systems play a key role in maintaining overall performance and reliability.

To help you prepare, we’ve outlined key recommendations to ensure your systems are ready to handle higher-than-normal traffic and deliver the best experience for your teams and Customers.

Monitor and alert proactively

Set up robust alerting and monitoring across your systems and integrations. Early detection of performance degradation, API slowdowns, or connection issues helps prevent downtime when demand is at its highest.

Ensure API stability

Review and validate your APIs for scalability and reliability.

Confirm your endpoints can handle increased request volume without rate-limiting or timeouts.
Monitor API response times and error rates to identify potential bottlenecks early.

Conduct load testing

Perform load testing to simulate expected peak conditions.

Base your tests on your highest projected Contact volume and Agent activity.
Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks before the holiday surge begins.

Build securely

Ensure your applications and integrations use at least one form of authentication.

Avoid sending or receiving data from unsecured sources.
Review authentication flows to ensure they remain performant under high load.

Optimize image handling

When sending image links through Gladly, use smaller image files whenever possible.

Smaller images improve browser download and display times.
Optimized media keeps the Customer experience smooth, even when traffic spikes.

Prepare overall for increased demand

Most importantly, make sure your external systems can scale to meet increased demand. Your system’s ability to handle higher load will directly impact the overall reliability and performance of the App Platform.

Additional support

If you have questions about testing, monitoring, or integration readiness ahead of the holidays, please contact Gladly Support. We’re here to help ensure a successful and seamless holiday season for both your team and your Customers.