Typewise's Holiday Support Surge Report: Customer Service Volume Jumps 22% as the Holiday Shopping Season Begins

Analysis of 10M+ customer service interactions reveals rising inefficiencies, collapsing chat availability, and a widening automation and AI gap during the busiest weeks of the year

ZÜRICH and SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 26, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Typewise, an enterprise-grade AI Agent Platform used by global brands, logistics, and e-commerce providers, including Unilever, DPD, and Beurer, today released its 2025 Holiday Support Surge Report. Ahead of Black Friday, the kickoff of the holiday shopping season, the comprehensive study analyzes more than 10 million customer service interactions from January to November 2025, benchmarked against last year's holiday season: Black Friday 2024 - EOY 2024. The findings reveal that holiday support doesn't just intensify existing pressures: it transforms the customer service environment entirely.

According to the report, customer service representatives typically handle 22% more sessions per week during the peak shopping period, up from 160 to 195 interactions per agent. But volume alone isn't the story. The nature of work shifts dramatically as agents lose the time usually spent contemplating responses and instead transition into rapid-fire writing. During the holiday window, agents' "thinking time" responding to service requests drops by 13%, while typing time rises by 8%. In the retail and e-commerce sector, the shift is even more pronounced, with thinking time falling by 17% and typing surging by 14%.

"Holiday support has become one of the most operationally demanding moments for modern brands," said David Eberle, co-founder and CEO of Typewise. "Our analysis shows that seasonal inefficiencies are really year-round inefficiencies in disguise. When volume surges, the cracks become impossible to ignore, from the thousands of hours spent retyping the same twenty phrases to the unnecessary stress caused by declining use of templates. When properly implemented, AI can eliminate much of this burden, improve quality, and give agents time back when they need it most."

Even as repetitive inquiries, such as delivery status questions, dominate customer inquiries, the use of predefined responses and templates unexpectedly falls. Typewise found that the use of snippets declines 27% during peak weeks, despite being explicitly designed to handle repetitive questions quickly. The drop in efficiency tools coincides with a spike in manual typing and an increase in errors. Across the year, agents typed "thans" instead of "thanks" 112,456 times, alongside tens of thousands of errors in short, common words like "the," a signal of cognitive overload more than carelessness.

The repetitive nature of customer service queries makes it a challenge that AI is well-suited to address. In fact, Typewise analysis found that nearly 46% of all customer service text is predictable by AI, rising to 60% in insurance and finance. Typewise customers already using AI-powered autocomplete and writing assistance are seeing 20-40% reductions in typing and response time, with retail and e-commerce agents saving 35%, equivalent to more than a full workday per month!

The holiday season also triggers a dramatic channel shift. Under normal conditions, customer service volume is split relatively evenly, with chat representing roughly 43% of interactions. But as holiday demand surges, real-time chat availability collapses to just 7%, while email balloons to 93%. Many companies intentionally throttle live channels to prevent backlogs, pushing customers toward asynchronous email, where longer wait times are easier to absorb. The unintended consequence: customers with urgent issues lose access to real-time support exactly when they need it most.

Typewise's 2025 Holiday Support Surge Report can be viewed and downloaded here.

About Typewise
Typewise is an enterprise-grade AI Agent Platform that fundamentally optimizes and automates customer service with the help of custom AI Agents and an intelligent Agent Assistant. Numerous Fortune 500 companies, including Unilever and DPD, have reduced effort by 50% or more using Typewise's cutting-edge AI technology. Typewise is backed by Y Combinator (S22) and has repeatedly been recognized as a "High Performer" in AI-driven automation on G2.

Media Contact
Kyle Austin
BMV for Typewise
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SOURCE Typewise