Peak season is a make-or-break period for retailers. With heightened customer expectations and increased order volume, delivering exceptional experiences while maintaining efficiency is paramount. Unfortunately, the pressure to meet demand often leads to reactive strategies that can damage brand reputation and bottom line.

A staggering 76% of customers would stop doing business with a company after just one bad customer experience. No matter the time of year, customers expect the same service they’ve been accustomed to — orders to be fulfilled on time and in full and returns to be free. These expectations don’t change at peak season.  If you don’t have the systems to deliver on these expectations during Peak, customers will go elsewhere.

Strategic planning is the key to thriving, rather than surviving, peak season. By anticipating and accounting for peak seasons, you can shift from a reactive to a proactive approach, helping you meet omni-channel demands while balancing speed and cost during high-pressure times.

The 5 Peak Season Challenge To Prepare For

Regardless of when your peak season is, whether it’s during the Christmas period, summer holidays, or big sales – there are five common challenges that your peak strategy needs to account for.

1.     Omni-channel experiences

Today’s customers expect flexibility in how they shop and return items, including both online and offline channels. Forbes data shows that 73% of consumers want seamless shopping between channels – which includes the freedom to research products online, compare prices, and even make purchases before heading to a physical store to try on or pick up their items. Or the inverse, where customers can discover a product in-store and complete the purchase online or through a mobile app.

Delivering an omni-channel experience requires a high degree of integration between each channel. Retailers must ensure that product information, pricing, inventory levels, and returns processes are consistent across all platforms.

2.     Inventory visibility and control

Real-time inventory visibility is an essential cornerstone of peak seasons. Knowing exactly what inventory is available, and where, is essential to optimize fulfillment, reducing stockouts and meeting customer expectations about what stock is available to purchase from where.

Without a real-time system, retailers will be subject to lost sales through stock-outs, delayed or canceled orders, and eroding customer trust and loyalty. Once study stated that if their good is out of stock, 40% of customers will either make a purchase elsewhere or refuse to purchase entirely.

3.     Fulfillment efficiency

56% of abandoned carts are due to concerns about shipping and delivery, with customers concerned that orders would not arrive fast enough.

By optimizing picking, packing, and shipping operations to deal with peak demand, retailers can reduce order fulfillment delays, improve customer satisfaction, and reduce return rates from orders that arrive too late.

4.     Effective returns management

An efficient returns management system is integral for all retailers, and its impact is seen most during peak seasons. Retailers must deal with high order and return volumes without losing profits or missing inventory — all while keeping customer satisfaction high.

As the last touchpoint with your brand, returns are even more important for the customer experience to get right. If done well, 94% of consumers would repurchase if the returns process is easy. During holiday seasons, 68% of shoppers say they’re more likely to check the return policy before they buy – factoring in the return journey as a key decision for shopping with your brand in the first place.

5.     Cost and availability of labor

With a tight labor market and rising wages, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for retailers to access and secure the seasonal workforce they need to meet peak season demands.

By using effective planning and technology, retailers can implement more efficient operations to ensure that they have the systems in place to handle peak volumes with the workforce available.

Peak Season: From Reactive to Proactive

Tackling the challenges of peak season requires the best technology and systems. Most legacy systems that retailers already have often struggle to provide the real-time visibility and dynamic flexibility necessary to optimize operations during peak periods.

Instead, retailers need modern, scalable systems that offer a network-wide view of operations, enabling them to anticipate and respond to fluctuations in demand. These solutions provide the foundation for dynamic fulfillment, allowing businesses to implement the most efficient strategies based on real-time data.

The true power of these systems is unleashed when they are fully integrated across the supply chain. End-to-end orchestration ensures that every department, from procurement to shipping, is aligned and working towards a common goal – optimizing inventory levels, reducing the risk of stockouts, and providing more efficient fulfillment and returns journeys while reducing costs.

By embracing technology and intelligent systems, retailers can transform peak season from a period of chaos to one of opportunity. Proactive planning and execution, driven by data-driven insights, will not only help retailers meet customer expectations but also build a stronger foundation for year-round success.

Orchestrate, Optimize and Scale During All Seasons

Peak season doesn’t have to be a dreaded period of uncertainty. By adopting a proactive approach and leveraging the right technology, retailers can transform this challenge into an opportunity for growth.

Delight Customers and Thrive in Peak With Blue Yonder

At Blue Yonder, our commerce and returns solutions help you thrive not only during peak season but all year round. With a composable architecture, retailers can pick and choose the services they need to optimize their operations. This includes:

  • Real-time, 360° inventory visibility services, letting you know accurate stock levels, location, and demand to make informed decisions about replenishment, allocation and promotions.
  • Industry-leading commits service that leverages advanced algorithms to determine the best sourcing and fulfillment options for each order, considering factors like cost, speed and capacity.
  • Commerce insights and action service that empowers data-driven decisions using advanced analytics and machine learning to identify trends, patterns, opportunities, and anomalies.
  • Fulfillment sourcing simulations, which allow you to model and test different scenarios and their impact on costs, delivery times, and customer satisfaction without disrupting live operations.
  • Returns initiation and orchestration services provide consumers with easy returns journeys while capturing returns data to optimize the return process by intelligently routing returns to the most appropriate location for processing, restocking, or disposal based on factors like product condition, return reason, and inventory levels.

Find out more how to transform your returns capabilities at blueyonder.com.