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A customer adds the last item to her cart on Black Friday, enters the wrong password twice, and requests a reset code. She waits. By the time the code arrives, six minutes later, she’s already closed the tab, abandoning the purchase.
She’s interested, the discount is appealing, and she’s ready to buy, but the delayed communication blocks the sale. Your team spent months preparing for the biggest sales weekend of the year, yet the payoff depends on whether the password reset, promo code, and status update all reach the customer on time. During peak season, heavy web traffic can get in the way of timely delivery. By the time you spot the delay, she’s already bought from a competitor.
The infrastructure carrying those messages from cart to delivery and beyond can fail at more points along your communications platform than most retailers plan for, and the cost — avoidable support inquiries, lost sales, customers who don’t come back — is multiplied across your entire customer base.
Black Friday performance rewards today’s prep
Consumers are looking for holiday deals earlier each year. One BCG study found 60% begin looking in October or early November, and Sinch research shows 37% seek promotions a full month out. Retailers are responding by launching campaigns and promotions earlier too, and as early sales activity grows, so does the load on your communications infrastructure.
That ramp-up period is your best window to test and validate your communications infrastructure, before the volume in browsing, account logins, and order inquiries becomes unforgiving. Weeks before the year’s biggest traffic spike, you still have time to find weak points and correct them, without losing customers or revenue once the heavy shopping volume hits.
Message purgatory: where critical notifications go to die
Delivery requirements look different by channel. Password resets and payment confirmations, for instance, need the right security in place to move safely. A password reset code can leave your system the instant it’s triggered and stall at the carrier before it reaches the customer’s device, which frustrates the recipient and interrupts the transaction. Similarly, in-app alerts need dependable delivery, or the notification meant to bring a customer back never arrives — or lands after they’ve purchased from a competitor. Your call center also needs the right infrastructure and capabilities to run at volume, including reliable call quality, text-to-speech, and call recording. That infrastructure won’t show up in a campaign brief, but without it, every transaction could be at risk of falling flat.
Customers have little patience for delays. A Sinch survey reports 2,800 consumers and leaders across more than 400 retailers found 75% expect an order confirmation within five minutes of purchase, and 47% want it almost instantly. That same urgency spans channels and message types: an SMS promo code the customer wants to apply before checkout, an email fraud alert or shipping update, a support call. When it’s so easy to buy from a competitor, a wait of just a few minutes risks losing the sale entirely.
Those delayed or botched communications all trace back to the same root cause: infrastructure that wasn’t built to handle the increased year-end shopping demand.
Stress-test before the rush tests you
Bring infrastructure into your holiday planning conversations now. As Black Friday and Cyber Monday grow closer, you need enough runway to test messaging cadence, confirm sender reputation, and catch delivery issues while the stakes are lower. Start with wherever friction is highest today — SMS delivery, email throughput, call quality — and expand from there.
When vetting a tech solution, Sinch experts point to three key considerations:
- Ask whether the provider has direct connections to network operators for speed and reliability, not just an aggregator sitting between you and the carrier. Fewer middlemen means fewer places for a message to stall during high-volume moments.
- Look for a defined reliability commitment. A concrete uptime guarantee, benchmarked specifically for peak-season demand, is one of the clearest signals a provider has actually built for scale rather than just claiming to.
- Ask what happens when something breaks at 2 a.m. during the busiest week of the year. A dedicated technical account team that can flag and resolve issues in real time, across every channel, is often the difference between a brief delay and a lost customer.
Michael Ahearn, a senior strategic messaging specialist for Sinch’s largest enterprise customers, advises prioritizing volume handling. “Make sure the provider can handle increased volume across all channels,” he notes. “You want to work with someone who can handle unforeseen traffic spikes as well as programmed increases from normal, non-seasonal volumes.”
Support capacity matters just as much as message delivery. “This is the year to enable automated responses to FAQs that come through messaging channels,” Ahearn adds. “In time for the holiday season, get an FAQ bot up and running in your messaging channels so those time-sensitive customer inquiries are answered quickly and efficiently with cost savings to the brand.”
Stress-testing your communications infrastructure before Black Friday means finding weaknesses while the stakes are still low. Every password reset, status update, and fraud alert that reaches a customer on time keeps a sale from falling through. Test now, before the real traffic arrives. The longer your weak points persist, the more they’ll cost you.
Turn customer touchpoints into memorable moments. Explore what’s possible and learn how Sinch helps you power communications that build loyalty, recover abandoned carts, and keep customers coming back for more.
