ChatGPTPeak season has a habit of creating more.
More communication goes out. More training gets assigned. More checks appear. More calls get booked. More pressure lands on store managers to keep everything moving while serving more customers with a workforce that is often changing by the week.
Most retailers already know how to add activity when performance starts to wobble. A more useful question is what they should take away.
We put that question to two people who know retail operations from the inside: Carrie Habel, co-founder and managing partner at Thread Advisory Group, who has spent more than 20 years across retail operations, field leadership, learning and organisational change; and Guy Tysick, a retail operator who has led more than 90 stores across multiple countries and previously spent more than a decade at Fossil.
The short answer is that retailers should stop adding communication without removing competing priorities, stop treating dashboards as the whole picture, stop using training completion as proof that people are ready, stop making store managers absorb every new problem, and stop assuming retail peak season ends on 31 December.
There is plenty to do during peak. The problem starts when every wobble creates another thing for stores to do as well.
1. Stop adding more communication when execution slips
When something starts going wrong in stores, the instinct from head office is understandable. Send a reminder. Schedule another call. Repeat the instruction. Create a checklist. Ask for an update.
Carrie has sat on both sides of that exchange, sending communications from corporate roles and receiving them in the field.
“I don’t think retailers have a communication problem during peak,” she said.
Very often, it is a prioritisation problem.
Every additional message asks somebody in a store to stop what they are doing, read or listen, work out what matters and decide where it sits against everything else already on their plate. During a quieter period, that interruption might be manageable. During peak, the same five-minute request is competing with customers, queues, deliveries, seasonal staff, standards and the dozens of other things that have to happen that day.
Carrie suggested that peak communications should answer three practical questions: what do you need me to do, by when, and what should I deprioritise to make room for it?
That last question is the one head office can easily miss.
If a new priority is genuinely urgent, something else may need to move. Otherwise the store has not been given a priority at all. It has been given another item and left to make the trade-off itself.
Guy sees the same problem from the operational side. During peak, every member of the team counts and every unnecessary interruption takes attention away from the shop floor. Senior and regional leaders therefore have an important role as filters. They need to decide what is genuinely a priority, what can wait and what does not need to reach stores at all.
That takes some confidence, particularly when pressure is building above them. It can mean managing upwards rather than simply forwarding every request.
This is also why operational comms work better when the action is explicit. If an update requires a store to change something, complete something or provide evidence, that work should not depend on somebody remembering an email and another person chasing it later. Ocasta’s Comms & Task Management hub can target the relevant update and attach the action that follows, giving stores a clear task while central teams can see readership and progress.
The technology is only part of it, though. A perfectly targeted message is still unnecessary if it never needed to be sent.
Before sending another peak communication, work out what you are willing to remove.
2. Stop treating dashboards as the full story
Retailers are not short of data.
Sales, conversion, labour, mystery shops, store visits, customer surveys and operational reporting can all tell you something useful about what is happening. The danger during peak is reaching for one number, diagnosing the problem from a distance and immediately asking the store to fix it.
Carrie’s approach is to look at three different sources together: the business results, observations of what is actually happening, and what customers are telling you.
The numbers might show a conversion problem. They do not automatically tell you why conversion is down.
A store visit can add context, but one visit is still one moment in one location. A mystery shop is useful, but it is a snapshot. Customer feedback adds another part of the picture. So does listening to the team working through the conditions every day.
The real value comes from putting those pieces together and looking for patterns across stores, districts and regions.
Guy’s advice when an ugly number lands is more human: take a breath.
Peak is a high-pressure environment, and one bad result can make everyone want an explanation immediately. His point is to resist that first reaction. Ask what happened, what changed, what the team saw and whether you are looking at a pattern or just one rough day.
Ask better questions.
What happened? What was different? When did it start? What did the team see? What was happening with staffing? Was this one difficult shift, or has the same problem appeared several times?
That matters particularly during peak because the environment is messy. A poor mystery-shop result may land on the same day somebody called in sick, a delivery arrived late and a queue formed out of nowhere. That does not make the result irrelevant, but it changes the conversation you should have about it.
There is another useful distinction here: outcomes and behaviours are not the same thing.
If conversion is down, repeatedly telling a store manager to “drive conversion” does not give them much to work with. Leaders need to understand which behaviours influence that outcome and whether those behaviours are actually happening. The same applies to service, product knowledge, upselling and operational standards.
A metric tells you where to look. Observation gives you a better chance of knowing what to do next.
3. Stop treating training completion as proof people are ready
The training dashboard turns green. Everyone has completed the peak modules. The business can move on.
Except the customer is not going to ask whether somebody passed a knowledge check. They are going to experience what that person can actually do on a busy Saturday afternoon.
Guy’s first challenge to retailers is to question the training itself. Product knowledge and selling skills matter, but peak also tests behaviours that are harder to capture in a standard module: resilience, confidence, judgement, communication and the ability to connect with customers when the store is under pressure.
Carrie sees another problem in the way businesses measure readiness.
Completion tells you that somebody moved through the training. It might tell you that they answered some questions correctly. It does not tell you that they can consistently perform the behaviour in a live store with a queue forming and several other things competing for their attention.
That requires practice.
Role plays, manager observation, feedback and coaching after the training all matter. Carrie also pointed out that businesses can spend a huge amount of time creating the learning itself and far less thinking about what happens afterwards.
Managers need to know how to reinforce it. They need useful coaching questions, scenarios to practise and a clear picture of the behaviour they are looking for.
A better definition of peak readiness is whether somebody knows what to do, can show that they can do it and can keep doing it when the pressure rises.
That changes the role of learning data too. Completion remains useful administrative information, but it is not proof of capability.
Where retailers want to see what is actually happening after the learning, Ocasta’s Observations & Coaching hub lets managers observe agreed behaviours in real work, coach while the moment is fresh and compare patterns across people, teams and locations. Those observations can then point L&D towards the knowledge or learning people actually need, rather than assigning more training because a metric moved in the wrong direction.
Peak is a fairly unforgiving test of whether training has made it into the real world. It is worth checking before the customer does it for you.
4. Stop making store managers absorb every problem
When peak gets difficult, the store manager often becomes the shock absorber.
A staffing gap appears, so they cover it. Results wobble, so another call goes into the diary. A central team needs an update, so they provide it. The store is busy, so they stay on the floor. Standards start slipping, so another report or check gets added.
Eventually there is very little room left for the manager to manage.
Guy suggested starting peak planning with a conversation that is broader than targets: what will it take for this manager and their team to get through the season healthy, happy and successful?
That does not mean removing accountability or pretending the commercial targets no longer matter. It means acknowledging the reality of the period and planning for the risks before they arrive.
Guy’s point was that the person on the other end of the phone matters in that moment. A calm “it’s fine, we’ll sort it” can do more for a manager than another escalation. Sometimes the senior leader’s job is simply to put the problem back into perspective.
The response from the leader above the store can either add to the problem or give the manager some room to deal with it.
Carrie would change one of the questions leaders regularly ask when results dip. Rather than starting with “How are you going to drive better results?”, ask what barrier you can remove.
That can lead to a much more useful conversation.
It might expose a reporting request that can wait, a meeting that does not need to happen, conflicting priorities from two central teams or a recurring piece of admin that is keeping the manager away from their people.
Carrie has seen strong leaders narrow a store visit or weekly focus to a small number of meaningful outcomes. Peak is not a good moment to ask a manager to carry 125 priorities with equal urgency.
Field leaders need preparation for this as well. Retail businesses put considerable effort into getting stores ready for peak, but district, regional and senior field leaders also need to understand how their role changes. Their communication, questions and presence in stores all have an effect on the pressure below them.
Guy offered one particularly practical example: if a store manager tells you that a Friday or Saturday visit will make their life harder rather than easier, listen to them.
Turning up because the diary says “store visit” can make the regional leader another thing to manage.
5. Stop assuming peak season ends on 31 December
Christmas finishes. The decorations come down. Everybody takes a breath.
The stores are not finished.
As Carrie put it, January is “kind of its own season”.
Returns and exchanges arrive. Customers spend gift cards. New floor sets need to go in. Inventory moves. Markdowns start. Seasonal staffing changes and permanent teams adjust again.
At the same time, many of the people doing that work are physically and emotionally tired after November and December.
Guy sees January as commercially important too. A customer coming back with an unwanted gift or a problem is giving the retailer another customer-service moment. How that return or exchange is handled can influence whether they come back later in the year.
That requires another shift in priorities. The team that was geared around peak trading now needs to think about returns, service, stock movement and the next trading period.
Planning needs to recognise the shift rather than expecting December’s operating rhythm to continue.
Carrie also made an important distinction between operational recovery and people recovery.
Retailers are used to talking about recovering a store. January planning also needs to consider schedules, recognition, time off and the fact that teams have just come through an unusually intense period. Seasonal colleagues may be leaving, roles can change again and store managers who spent peak primarily leading the team may find themselves spending more time directly serving customers.
Those transitions are easier when they are made explicit.
Guy’s advice was straightforward: include January in the peak planning package from the beginning.
Do not wait until everyone reaches Boxing Day to decide how the next few weeks are supposed to work.
What tends to break first during retail peak season?
During the Q&A, Carrie was asked which part of retail operations tends to break first when things get busy: communication, training, tasks or execution.
Her answer was execution, closely followed by team morale.
Guy agreed with the visible symptom but described the problem as a ripple effect. Communication becomes shorter and less clear. It shifts from a conversation towards instructions. People under pressure interpret those instructions differently. Eventually the breakdown becomes visible in execution.
That is why adding another layer of checking after execution has already slipped can miss the point.
The failed task, poor visit or missed standard might be where you first see the problem. The cause may have started earlier with unclear priorities, too much communication, a skills gap or a manager who has been carrying too much for too long.
Good peak management means getting closer to that cause.
Retail peak season FAQs
What is peak season in retail?
Retail peak season is the high-pressure trading period when stores face increased customer demand alongside additional operational activity. For many retailers, the golden quarter and Christmas form the core of peak, but the operational workload continues into January through returns, exchanges, markdowns, stock movement and changing staffing requirements.
How should retailers communicate with stores during peak season?
Peak communication should make the required action and deadline clear and tell stores what can be deprioritised if a new request takes precedence. Leaders should filter requests before they reach stores rather than responding to every performance wobble with another email, call or checklist.
How can retailers tell whether employees are ready for peak?
Training completion is one indicator, but it does not prove that someone can perform the required behaviour under pressure. Retailers can get a clearer view by combining knowledge checks with practice, observation and manager coaching in the real working environment.
Why should January be part of retail peak planning?
January brings its own mix of returns, exchanges, gift-card customers, markdowns, floor changes and staffing transitions. Teams may also be recovering from the physical and emotional demands of November and December, so operational planning should include both the work that needs doing and the people recovery needed to do it well.
Peak planning needs a subtraction list too
Retail peak season will always be busy. There are real commercial targets to hit, customers to serve and standards to maintain.
What Carrie and Guy kept returning to throughout the session was the way leaders respond when that pressure arrives.
Another message does not automatically create clarity. Another training module does not automatically create capability. Another call with a store manager does not automatically create accountability.
Guy came back to the same advice several times during the session: take a breath.
That sounds almost too simple for peak, but it is probably why it matters. Before sending another message, adding another call or asking a store manager for another update, work out whether it genuinely needs to happen now. Carrie’s version of the same idea was just as practical: if something new becomes a priority, be clear about what can move out of the way.
Peak will still be busy. The aim is not to make it quiet. It is to stop head office adding noise when stores already have enough to deal with.
That is worth deciding before peak rather than halfway through it. And once those priorities are clear, the systems around them should make the work easier to see, not create another layer of chasing.
Ocasta brings operational comms, tasks, knowledge, inspections and coaching into one frontline platform, so central teams can see what has landed, what still needs doing and where attention is needed without asking stores for another update.
