Imagine being in the online queue for a concert you’ve been anxious to get a ticket for. As the countdown progresses, it’s finally your turn. Just when the purchase is about to be completed, the page refreshes endlessly, goes blank, and displays a message that an error has occurred, forcing you to start over. This seems like a minor issue, but when the realization of going back to the end of the queue hits, frustration can quickly overshadow the initial excitement.
From the customer’s side, this experience could affect the reliability of future purchases. It could make them think twice before shopping there again, especially if they already had concerns about the difficulties in completing transactions. From the company’s perspective, a website outage implies significant losses, such as direct revenue loss due to a main sales channel being shut down, and a loss of organizational trust, potentially driving customers to competitors.
In retail and e-commerce business, customer experience is paramount. A company whose e-commerce frequently experiences downtime could receive a negative market reaction from investors.
These experiences highlight the importance of robust support readiness programs, especially during holiday seasons when businesses strive for more sales and revenue through their digital platforms. With customer expectations at an all-time high, businesses need reliable, scalable, and innovative solutions to deliver exceptional shopping experiences. Proactive support measures can considerably reduce system failures during peak times, which not only reinforces customer satisfaction but also protects organizational trust and revenue. SAP’s holiday support readiness program is designed to address these needs. It offers a strategic, data-driven approach to help businesses thrive during peak periods.
The holiday support readiness program is a customer experience program by SAP to help safeguard and establish strong support for digital commerce and retail customers during high shopping times. Key features of the program include:
- Comprehensive coverage: It can cover events ranging from Singles Day in China and El Buen Fin in Mexico to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and New Year’s.
- Extensive participation: Last year, 143 customers with 200 tenants used SAP’s holiday support readiness program to navigate the holiday rush successfully.
- Early preparation: Preparation begins 4–6 months in advance, involving collaboration among customer support, cloud operations, and product engineering teams.
The focus on customer experience has increased due to the expansion of interfaces through which customers interact with companies. In a survey conducted in the European Union in 2023, 70% of respondents bought products or ordered services electronically in the preceding 12 months. For corporations, this online influx depicts a figure of more than US$300 billion in the last quarter of 2024 alone for U.S. retail e-commerce sales. To approach these complexities, companies have steadily turned to advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) to strengthen their support systems.
In 2024, SAP introduced a preventative care model under the transformation blueprint, aimed at delivering predictive, proactive, bi-directional support integrated with AI-driven insights and automation, allowing teams to predict potential problems and address them before they impact customers—and potentially millions of users. SAP’s proprietary AI tools are deployed to help streamline support processes, enhance operational insights, and enable predictive and proactive engagement.
This represents a pioneering shift in the industry, positioning SAP as a front-runner in AI-driven, predictive, and proactive support solutions. The model provides a comprehensive, 360-degree customer support profile, helping to accelerate issue detection and anticipate potential problems, with AI-integrated features like a virtual support assistant, resource and web traffic predictions, a recommendation engine, case history analysis, issue correlation, and pattern recognition.
To operationalize this model, SAP leverages collaboration approaches among product engineering teams, cloud operations—database administrators and technical operations managers—technical support, and mission-critical teams to convey comprehensive case analysis reports and detailed recommendations and action plans for each customer. This can allow SAP to identify and resolve future issues before customers are affected, helping to reinforce system stability during peak sales periods. For example, the proactive support process for the 2024 Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales events involved holistic health checks for over 143 customers and 200 production environments, setting a new standard in holiday readiness.
When aligned with the organizational strategy, a support program can foster a more positive customer journey, resulting in improved customer loyalty. “The holiday support readiness program isn’t just about managing the current peak; it’s about preparing for the next one. Our focus on preventative, AI-driven support means that our customers can focus on their business, not on system stability,” says Stefan Steinle, executive vice president and head of Customer Support & CLM at SAP.
For enterprises, joining the holiday support readiness program can also offer the following advantages:
- Minimize downtime: It helps ensure e-commerce platforms are ready when it matters most.
- Optimize performance: It uses AI and automation to help maintain peak system health and customer satisfaction.
- Stay ahead: Proactive monitoring and predictive support help keep organizations one step ahead of potential outcomes.
Looking forward, preparing for upcoming retail peak seasons cannot be overstated. SAP Sapphire in 2025 will hold dedicated sessions to help ensure customers are well-equipped for these challenging periods. From live demos to expert interactions, attendees will be able to witness firsthand how SAP’s tools help keep businesses running smoothly and engage directly with solution experts.
Our commitment at SAP Sapphire in 2025 is to equip customers with the knowledge and tools needed for uninterrupted success during every peak period. The holiday support readiness program is about turning challenges into opportunities for growth. With these resources, businesses will be better prepared to face uncertainties and use favorable circumstances in demanding times, ensuring sustained development and customer satisfaction.
Don’t wait until the next holiday season to find last-minute solutions. Be a part of the holiday support readiness program now and secure your business’s performance for future peak sales periods.
