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How much will support tickets rise this holiday peak, and how should ecommerce teams staff for it?

By Uassist.ME Editorial Team · Published by Uassist.ME · Published 2026-10-23 · Last updated 2026-10-23

Disclosure: Cart Signal is published by Uassist.ME, which sells customer-support and order-ops staffing, so it has a commercial interest in this topic. No company named below paid for coverage. Vendor figures are labeled vendor-reported and forecasts are labeled as forecasts.

Short answer: Plan for a large but uneven rise. One vendor's benchmark of its ecommerce customers found daily ticket volume up 44% in November and December 2025 compared with September and October, with "where is my order?" (WISMO) tickets up 85% and returns tickets peaking in early January (vendor-reported, DigitalGenius, Peak Performance 2026 report). Staff to your own baseline, contact reason by contact reason, rather than to a single uplift figure.

How big will the 2026 holiday season be?

Both major forecasts point to growth, with online growing faster than retail overall. These are forecasts:

Adobe also expects October to be bigger than usual. It forecasts October online sales up 8% to $95.8 billion, with Prime Big Deal Days bringing in almost $10 billion (Retail Dive, Sept 28, 2026). For support teams, that means the post-purchase tickets from early deals arrive before Black Friday.

How much did support tickets rise last peak?

The best public benchmark we found is from DigitalGenius, an AI customer service vendor. It compared tickets from its ecommerce customers during November and December 2025 with a September and October baseline. All figures are vendor-reported and come from DigitalGenius' own customer base (DigitalGenius, Peak Performance 2026 report):

Ticket type Change vs Sept–Oct baseline Peak day
All tickets +44% (vs +62% the year before) Monday, Dec 1
Where is my order? (WISMO) +85% Dec 17
Returns +54% (North America +72%, Europe +52%) Jan 5
Wrong item +48% Dec 11
Quality issues (damage, faulty items) +26% Not reported

Three patterns in the report are useful for planning:

  1. Volume stayed near baseline until around Nov 11, then climbed, which the report links to Black Friday sales starting earlier.
  2. WISMO drives December, returns drive January. WISMO fell after Dec 22, and returns rose sharply from Boxing Day into January.
  3. Averages hide outliers. The report notes that many brands will see much bigger WISMO increases depending on their supply chain and carriers, and advises comparing your own data by ticket type.

DigitalGenius puts the 44% average in staffing terms: for a team of five agents, it is "enough work for an extra two to three employees."

How do you turn a ticket forecast into a staffing plan?

Here is a simple method using your own data. The numbers in the example are illustrative, not a benchmark:

  1. Measure your baseline. Average daily tickets in September and October, split by contact reason (WISMO, returns, product questions, order changes, and so on).
  2. Apply an uplift per contact reason, using last year's peak if you have it. If you don't, the DigitalGenius figures above are one reference point.
  3. Divide by realistic agent throughput. Use your own tickets-per-agent-per-day figure for each contact reason, not a blended number.
  4. Plan by week, not by season. In the benchmark, WISMO peaked on Dec 17 and returns peaked on Jan 5, so the busiest week for each contact reason is different.

Illustration: a store averaging 400 tickets a day in October, half of them WISMO, would expect about 200 × 1.85 = 370 WISMO tickets a day at the WISMO peak if it matched the benchmark. If an agent handles 60 WISMO tickets a day, that is roughly six agents on WISMO alone, before returns and other contact reasons.

Will it be hard to hire seasonal help this year?

There is more competition for seasonal workers, and the mix is changing. As of Sept 30, seasonal job postings on Indeed were up about 10% from a year earlier and about 7% above 2019 (Indeed Hiring Lab, Oct 15, 2026). Other findings:

NRF expects retailers to hire 325,000 to 375,000 seasonal workers, in line with last year's estimated 356,000 (forecast, NRF, Oct 15, 2026).

How much of the peak can an AI chatbot absorb?

Some, but customers give it a short leash. In a survey of 3,000 consumers in the US, UK and Germany, 92% said they give AI less than 10 minutes before asking for a person, and roughly a third said they had to repeat information after being handed over (vendor survey, Five9, Oct 14, 2026). Plan human capacity for escalations, especially on WISMO and delivery problems close to Christmas, when the DigitalGenius report says customers' emotions run highest.

For more on the AI side, read Do shoppers trust AI customer service?. For a week-by-week checklist, get our free peak-season readiness checklist.

FAQ

How much do ecommerce support tickets increase during the holidays?

In DigitalGenius' vendor-reported benchmark of its ecommerce customers, average daily tickets in November and December 2025 were 44% higher than in September and October. WISMO tickets rose 85% and returns tickets 54%.

When is the busiest day for ecommerce customer service?

In the same benchmark, overall tickets peaked on Monday, Dec 1, 2025, WISMO tickets on Dec 17 and returns tickets on Jan 5, 2026.

How many seasonal workers will retailers hire in 2026?

NRF forecasts 325,000 to 375,000 seasonal hires for the 2026 holidays, in line with about 356,000 last year.

How big will 2026 holiday online sales be?

Adobe forecasts US online holiday sales of $275.1 billion from Nov 1 to Dec 31, up 6.7%, with Cyber Monday above $15 billion.

Should I staff for the average uplift?

No. Uplift varies by contact reason and by week. Use your own baseline per contact reason and plan for WISMO in December and returns in January.

Sources

All checked 2026-10-23.