How businesses can turn post-Christmas regret into lasting connections
Each December, businesses chase festive perfection with flawlessly wrapped parcels, overnight deliveries, and that reassuring “we’ve got you” energy. Then January hits. The sparkle’s gone, returns pile up, and customers are left asking “where did the magic go when the money stopped flowing?”
When Santa clocks off, the real work begins
By the time Santa’s back at the North Pole, your service teams are knee-deep in the emotional aftermath of broken toys, wrong sizes, and the “thanks but no thanks” with those unwanted gifts. Returns are rarely about the product, they’re about expectation management. And yet, most organisations still treat them as a logistical process, not an emotional one.
Most businesses miss that a customer return is still a customer interaction. Handle it well, and you turn regret into relief. Handle it badly, and you make the naughty list, for good.
A holiday hangover by numbers
With e-commerce return rates regularly sitting between 15 to 30% (and spiking even higher during seasonal peak) brands can’t afford to treat returns as a side issue. (Source, Cahoot).
This is not just a logistics problem, it’s a relationship problem. Every return is a conversation waiting to happen and a chance to either rebuild trust or quietly lose it.
Can AI give Santa a helping hand?
AI isn’t the new elf on the shelf, but it can make sure no one’s left waiting in the cold. Smart automation can triage routine returns, spot emotional signals in language, and surface the right tone or next best action for an agent before burnout sets in.
But the trick isn’t to automate empathy, it’s to amplify it. When the systems handle the repetitive work, people can focus on what matters most: listening, understanding, and rebuilding trust when it’s most fragile.
How Newstel helps businesses beat the Christmas blues
At Newstel, we help brands turn their post-peak chaos into post-sale confidence. Our tools and expertise are built for the moments after the magic when empathy, speed, and insight matter most.
Here’s how we do it:
- Smart Forecasting: we highlight the product lines that are most likely to generate returns, so you can plan capacity and communication before the January rush hits.
- Measuring what matters: beyond typical cost-to-serve metrics, we track emotional outcomes like XNPS (how the customer feels after the return) because that’s what drives loyalty into 2026.
- Sentiment Analysis: our systems read the sentiment and tone behind customer messages, flagging moments that need extra care or escalation.
- Post-return Engagement: we don’t stop at the refund, we help you close the loop with personalised outreach that turns a return into a recovery.
- Smart automation with a human heart: we leverage AI to handle routine return flows and updates, freeing up agents to focus on interactions where empathy has real impact.
This Is where Next Year starts
At Newstel, we help businesses turn post-peak chaos into post-sale confidence.
If you’re ready to turn your returns into retention, let’s talk.
