The sale goes live at midnight. By 1 a.m. the support inbox shows nine hundred open chats, the warehouse has stacked cartons in the aisle, and twenty temporary pickers who joined at 6 p.m. are asking which bin holds the blue kurta in size M. Orders breach the dispatch cut-off. Couriers leave without manifests. The brand pays twice, once in refunds and again in the bad reviews that follow.
Peak weeks are one of the patterns on the hub for online brands: the date is known months ahead, yet the extra hands are not ready. What follows covers how it shows in each team, why it recurs and how to plan the fortnight. A first-day routine is described on the onboarding page.
What it looks like in three places
- Warehouse: temporary pickers walk the wrong aisle, mis-scan SKUs, and pack in a rush with torn bubble wrap and wrong labels. Putaway lags, so stock exists on the shelf but not in the system.
- Support desk: new agents copy canned replies, promise refunds they cannot approve and escalate everything. The queue grows and the best agents get overloaded.
- Content and catalogue: late listings, mismatched sizes and photographs that do not match the colour sold, producing returns and RTO.
Why it keeps happening
Hiring is pushed to the last week because budgets are confirmed late. Onboarding is a half-day briefing. Nobody owns the cold start. The founder trusts that sheer energy will carry the sale, as it did last year when volume was smaller. The result is a double failure: new people are not productive, and experienced ones burn out supervising them.
A fortnight plan that works backward from the sale
- 1
Twenty-one days out: forecast by role
Estimate pickers, packers, QC checkers, label printers, support agents by language, returns processors. Use last sale's order peaks as a base, then add the growth you expect from planned ad spend.
- 2
Fourteen days out: hire and shortlist
Close offers for temporary roles. Keep a standby bench of extra names for no-shows, sized from your own earlier no-show experience.
- 3
Seven days out: one-hour modules
Record short videos: how to read a pick list, how to scan a bin, how to pack a fragile item, how to log a damaged return, how to write a refund reply. Test them on one person who has never seen the system.
- 4
Three days out: dry run
Hold a mock peak on a Sunday: fifty test orders through pick, pack, label and manifest. Fix bottlenecks and label bins clearly.
- 5
Day of sale: buddy and board
Give every newcomer a regular as buddy. Put a live board showing orders, pending pick and dispatch cut-off where everyone sees it.
The support desk has its own cold start
Chat and email agents need more than a script. Teach the order lifecycle first: placed, confirmed, picked, packed, manifested, in transit, out for delivery, delivered, RTO. Show where the tracking page lags. Agents who understand why a parcel shows 'in transit' for two days stop promising miracles. Add the COD confirmation call, the address-correction request and the wrong-size exchange to a short role-play. Keep a floor walker for each language group, such as Hindi, Kannada or Tamil, so that a new agent can ask a colleague instead of escalating blindly.
Catalogue and creative need a freeze date
Last-minute price edits, colour swaps and bundle changes on the storefront feed straight into mis-picks and complaints. Fix a catalogue freeze four days before the sale. After that, changes go through one person. The photographer, the listing editor and the warehouse QC lead should sit together once, check the top fifty SKUs against the real cartons and confirm colour names and size charts.
Make the first shift safe
Temporary staff work long hours on hard floors with cutters, tape guns and heavy cartons. Show the exit, the first-aid box, the rule on lifting and the place to take a break. A tired packer cuts a hand. A supervisor who explains it clearly on day one saves a hospital trip on day three.
Pay and retention for peak crews
A peak crew is a recruiting pool for next year. Pay on the day you promised. Give the best ones a written note of their performance and the right to be called first. Offer a few the chance to join as permanent pickers or QC staff. Look at the way beauty D2C onboarding handles a first week; much of it carries over.
After the sale
Within a week, hold a thirty-minute review with the warehouse lead, support lead and catalogue lead. Count mis-picks, tickets older than a day, RTO and refund requests, and ask what delayed readiness. Add two changes to next year's plan, no more. To compare notes on your forecast, send it via the requirements wizard.
