Prevent a post-holiday support backlog by planning coverage into early January, answering predictable order and return questions in self-service, prioritizing tickets by urgency, publishing clear service and policy updates, and reviewing what drove demand. The holiday rush often leaves a tail of shipping questions, returns, refunds, and unresolved order problems; plan for that work rather than treating the end of a sale or Christmas as the end of the support season.
Shopify reported an average 79% spike in support tickets during the first week of December in its 2025 holiday guidance. It says weekly volume remains above average through December—with a dip in the week after Christmas—and into early January. That is a Shopify-published benchmark, not a forecast for every store. Use your own ticket history, order expectations, promotions, and channel mix to plan staffing. Shopify’s 2025 holiday customer-service guidance recommends examining daily and year-over-year trends as well as hourly volume by channel.
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1. Plan for the post-holiday tail, not only the peak
A calendar date does not close open delivery problems, refund requests, or questions about return eligibility. Build a recovery period into the seasonal schedule and forecast demand by week and channel, including the first weeks of January.
Build a forecast from your own support history
- Review ticket volume from the previous holiday period by week, day, hour, and channel. Look for when demand started to rise, whether it dipped after Christmas, and how long it took to return to normal.
- Compare that pattern with this year’s expected order volume, promotions, shipping arrangements, and channel mix. A change in any of these can make last year’s ticket counts a poor direct forecast.
- Identify the hours and channels that need coverage, rather than applying a single staffing ratio to the entire week. Shopify’s guidance points to hourly channel trends as a planning input; it does not establish a universal tickets-per-agent formula.
- Schedule coverage through the recovery period, then adjust as actual volume comes in. Shopify’s examples include assigning agents to time slots or ticket sections and keeping backup coverage available; these are options to adapt, not a fixed staffing prescription. Shopify’s peak-season scheduling guidance
Shopify’s 79% figure gives a sense of how sharply demand can rise, but it is not a headcount recommendation. The practical forecast is the one built around your own queue history and business conditions.
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2. Resolve predictable questions before they become tickets
Customers commonly want to know, “How long until my order is here?” and “How can I return my order?” Put accurate answers where shoppers can find them before they contact an agent: in a searchable help center, in order and shipping communications, and anywhere customers begin a return.
Prioritize the information customers need after the sale
- Explain how to check order status and what to do if tracking has not updated or a delivery is late.
- State which purchases qualify for return, how to start a return, the applicable deadline, and what happens next in the refund process.
- Keep shipping and holiday deadlines current, including any changes that apply to particular regions or delivery methods.
- Link directly to the relevant help article from order confirmations, shipping updates, and return instructions so customers do not have to search for it.
Review the pages when policies, shipping estimates, or seasonal deadlines change. An outdated answer can create confusion and another contact instead of resolving the first question. Zendesk recommends creating knowledge-base content for recurring requests such as returns and shipping; Shopify’s older holiday-rush guide also recommends refreshing FAQ content and simplifying return processing. Zendesk’s retail support guidance · Shopify’s holiday customer-service process guide
3. Triage by issue and customer impact
When the queue grows, treating every ticket as interchangeable can leave urgent problems waiting behind routine questions. Categorize recurring issues and give agents a clear way to surface cases that have a greater customer or business impact.
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Make the queue easier to act on
- Tag the reason for contact. Use a consistent set of categories for common issues such as delivery delay, order status, return, refund, and address change. Review the categories against the questions actually arriving in the queue.
- Use approved responses for repeat questions. Prepare and review macros for common cases so agents can answer consistently. Update them when delivery information or policies change; a fast, outdated response is still a bad answer.
- Set a priority route. Make high-impact tickets visible and route them for prompt attention. Define priority using your operation’s own customer and fulfillment risks, rather than assuming every ticket in a broad category has the same urgency.
- Share patterns with the team that can fix the cause. A cluster of delivery-delay tickets may require attention from fulfillment or logistics; a surge of promotion or discount questions may point to a communication problem. Feed recurring patterns to the relevant operations or marketing owner.
Zendesk’s retail guidance recommends monitoring common request types and reviewing macros, while its high-volume disruption guidance recommends highlighting high-priority tickets and monitoring support metrics. These workflows can be managed in a help desk or ticketing system; the guidance does not establish one platform as the best choice. Zendesk’s guidance on retail support workflows · Zendesk’s guidance for support during high-volume disruptions
4. Make support hours, delivery updates, and policies visible
Customers are more likely to follow up when they cannot tell whether support is open, when a reply might come, or what a return policy permits. Put the current information in places customers already use, and make sure agents are working from the same version.
- Support availability: Publish current support hours and any regional or holiday schedule changes. If demand is delaying replies, tell customers plainly rather than leaving them to infer what is happening.
- Delivery: Share current shipping estimates and notices about known delays through the channels customers use for order updates. Avoid presenting an estimate as a guarantee when it is not one.
- Returns and refunds: State the applicable deadline and explain the steps and timing customers should expect. If a price-match or price-adjustment policy applies, publish its terms rather than leaving agents to interpret an unclear rule case by case.
- Consistency: Keep public help content, customer notices, and agent macros aligned. If fulfillment or policy details change, update the customer-facing information and approved responses together.
Zendesk recommends customer-facing notices and self-service information during high-volume disruptions. Shopify’s post-holiday operations guidance highlights clear return deadlines, published price-match policies, regional schedule notices, and coordinated fulfillment staffing. The specific deadlines, hours, and policies remain business- and region-dependent. Zendesk’s disruption-support guidance · Shopify’s post-holiday operations guidance
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5. Review the recovery period and improve the next plan
Once the queue is under control, compare what happened with the forecast. A short review helps distinguish a staffing shortfall from a preventable spike in repeat questions or a problem that another team could address.
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- Compare forecast with actual volume. Review ticket totals by week, time, and channel, including how demand changed after Christmas and into January.
- Check service outcomes alongside volume. Review first-response time, resolution, and customer satisfaction, and compare holiday performance with your normal-period measures. Ticket count alone cannot show whether customers received timely and effective help.
- Identify recurring contact drivers. Look at issue tags, repeated questions, and cases that needed escalation. Separate a temporary rush from a recurring problem in shipping information, policy clarity, fulfillment, or promotion messaging.
- Assign concrete follow-up work. Update the relevant help articles and macros, record operational fixes for the teams responsible, and capture scheduling lessons for next season.
Shopify recommends comparing service measures across holiday and normal periods and reviewing the seasonal operation to inform future planning. A useful review records what changed and who owns the follow-up, so the same preventable contacts do not simply return next holiday season. Shopify’s holiday service-planning guidance · Shopify’s post-holiday operations guidance
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Frequently Asked Questions
Does Shopify’s 79% ticket increase apply to every store?
No. Shopify presents it as an average spike in its 2025 holiday guidance, and the page does not provide a linked underlying dataset that would establish it as a universal or independently measured industry forecast. Treat it as context, not as a prediction for your business; forecast from your own historical volume and current operating plans.
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How should a store use last year’s ticket data if its business has changed?
Use the prior period to understand the shape of demand—when contacts rose, which channels were busiest, and how long the recovery took—then account for changes such as this year’s promotions, expected orders, and support channels. Shopify’s older 2020 guide also suggests using prior customer and ticket counts as a planning input; it is a method, not a current statistic or policy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Shopify’s 79% ticket increase apply to every store?
No. Shopify presents it as an average spike in its 2025 holiday guidance, and the page does not provide a linked underlying dataset that would establish it as a universal or independently measured industry forecast. Treat it as context, not as a prediction for your business; forecast from your own historical volume and current operating plans.
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Use the prior period to understand the shape of demand—when contacts rose, which channels were busiest, and how long the recovery took—then account for changes such as this year’s promotions, expected orders, and support channels. Shopify’s older 2020 guide also suggests using prior customer and ticket counts as a planning input; it is a method, not a current statistic or policy.
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