Australian shoppers prefer human support over AI in Black Friday sales
Tue, 25th Nov 2025
AI can help during Black Friday, but trust decides who wins. Australian shoppers want clarity, control, and fast access to a real person when things go wrong.
Recent research points to a split mood. As Ginger Kidd, VP Marketing and Communications APAC at Sinch, put it: "Almost a third (29%) of consumers expect AI to simplify their shopping experience during Black Friday/Cyber Monday, 32% remain skeptical, and a significant 43% express worry over privacy."
What customers actually want
- Email remains the top channel for promotions, shipping updates, and order tracking.
- Only 2% of shoppers would choose a chatbot to resolve an issue.
- 55% prefer resolving support questions through email with a human.
The takeaway: automate the edges, not the core. Keep a clear and fast path to a human for anything post-purchase or high-stakes.
Action plan for Support and Sales leaders
- Staffing: over-allocate human coverage for order issues, payment failures, and delivery problems. Set a visible escalation path.
- Routing: triage simple inquiries (status, returns policy, store hours) with AI, but offer "talk to a human" within two steps at all times.
- Service levels: publish your peak SLAs in your help center and in email footers. Hold yourself to them.
- Templates: ship pre-approved email responses for top 15 scenarios (late delivery, wrong item, partial shipment, discount not applied, duplicate charge).
- Proactive comms: send shipping and delay notifications early via email. Don't hide bad news; it reduces tickets.
- Failsafes: if the bot sees negative sentiment or repeat contacts in 24 hours, auto-route to a senior agent.
Use AI as an assistant, not a replacement
AI works best in the background: summarising tickets, suggesting responses, and spotting risk. Be explicit about where AI is used and why.
- Label clearly: "You're chatting with our assistant. Ask for a human anytime."
- Data discipline: collect only what you need, keep it secure, and explain usage in plain language.
- Consent and compliance: align with the Australian Privacy Principles. See the OAIC guidance here.
- Promotions: respect unsubscribe and frequency limits. ACMA's spam rules are outlined here.
Messaging that meets preference
- Promos: email first. Keep SMS for time-sensitive alerts customers expect.
- Orders: email for confirmations, dispatch, and tracking. Keep subject lines functional and scannable.
- Support: lead with email and live agents. Offer chatbots as a shortcut for basics, not as a wall.
Metrics to watch during peak
- First Contact Resolution (FCR) by channel
- Median first response time and backlog growth per hour
- Deflection-to-resolution rate (not just deflection)
- Abandonment rate in chat and phone
- CSAT by issue type (shipping, payment, returns)
- Unsubscribe and complaint rates on promotional emails
7-day playbook (use now, refine for Christmas)
- Day 1: Publish "peak support" page with SLAs, live hours, and escalation options.
- Day 2: Train agents on updated macros and AI assist. Add examples for edge cases.
- Day 3: Enable proactive shipping updates and delay notices via email.
- Day 4: Bot tuning-limit to FAQs, add human handoff buttons at the top and bottom.
- Day 5: QA 50 random tickets. Fix any slow queues or broken routing rules.
- Day 6: Run a stress drill (burst of tickets). Validate alerting and dashboards.
- Day 7: Set an incident bridge protocol for carrier or payment outages.
Why this matters for revenue
Speed and clarity protect conversion during the sale and reduce refunds after it. Every hard-to-reach support channel erodes trust-especially while spending spikes.
Or as Kidd summarised: "Trust is built by respecting channel choice, being transparent about data use, and deploying AI as an assistant, not a replacement."
Next: prepare for the Christmas window
- Hold a 60-minute post-mortem within 72 hours of Black Friday. Capture what to repeat and what to retire.
- Shift budget to the channels that actually resolved issues fastest (likely email + human).
- Update your help center and templates based on the top five ticket drivers.
If you're upskilling your team on AI-assisted workflows without losing the human touch, explore role-based learning paths at Complete AI Training.
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