The BFCM support checklist, week by week.

Use this as a working list: copy it into your team's tracker and give every line one owner. The reasoning behind each step is in the Black Friday customer service playbook.

By November 13: policies and answers

• Write the sale rules: which codes apply, whether they stack, what is final sale, and whether a late shopper gets the sale price. The missed the sale price template needs this answer.
• Set your order-by dates per shipping service, using the holiday shipping cutoffs guide.
• Decide your holiday return window and gift rules, using the holiday return policy guide.
• Write sale-week processing time down in one sentence.
• Put each of the above in a knowledge article. Every chat and email answer should come from these.

By November 20: setup and testing

• Create a procedure for each spike question, each with a When to use: discount codes, order changes, delivery dates, gift requests.
• Run Check trigger on every new procedure and read the near misses it lists.
• Test each one with a replay of a past conversation before you set it live.
• Add always-on rules as Instructions, such as "Never promise a delivery date."
• Choose each topic's AI level. Keep refunds and anything new on Drafts.
• Mark Thanksgiving and closed days as holidays in business hours, and check your outside-hours message.
• Check your plan's included AI replies against last year's sale volume, and note when usage alerts will fire.

November 26 to 30: sale week

Run the same short routine each morning and evening:

• Approve or reject the order actions and refunds waiting for the team.
• Read the handoff reasons since the last check. A repeated reason usually means a missing article.
• Fix the article, not the reply, when Aide or a teammate gets an answer wrong.
• Swap the banner and chat answers the moment a code, offer or cutoff changes.
• Keep a person on the sale-email hours and the evening after.

December 1 to 24: delivery questions

• Move procedures from sale questions to delivery questions, using will it arrive by Christmas and the where is my order template.
• Watch for stalled tracking and carrier exceptions, using the WISMO peak season guide.
• Update the site banner the morning after each cutoff passes.
• Make sure gift receipt and ship as a gift requests reach whoever packs orders.

December 26 to January: the return wave

• Turn on returns in Aide if you haven't, and check your Shopify return rules match the holiday window.
• Use extended holiday returns and gift return for the common questions.
• Plan for requests after the deadline with return outside the window.

After the window closes: review

• Set the return window and policy pages back to standard the day after the deadline.
• Switch off the holiday procedures, so they stop matching.
• Read the season's handoff reasons and weekly knowledge gaps, and write next year's articles from them.
• Keep this checklist, with your notes, for next November.