The BFCM Apocalypse

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Something surprising happened this Black Friday. While everyone was celebrating record sales numbers, I noticed a disturbing pattern talking to D2C founders.

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The startups split into two groups. The first group had normal customer service. The second had AI. The difference was like falling off a cliff.

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The Hard Truth

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Most founders don't want to hear this, but traditional customer service is dead. Not gradually declining - dead. When your competitor responds in 30 seconds and you take 5 minutes, you're finished.

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The Numbers

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The metrics tell a clear story. Traditional support teams drowned. Cart abandonment passed 70%. Returns jumped 31%. But companies using AI saw 25% better conversion rates.

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Think about what this means. The gap isn't small - it's existential.

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Why This Matters

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The interesting thing about BFCM isn't the immediate damage. It's what it reveals about the future of commerce.

When you're drowning in support tickets, you're not really doing customer service. You're playing a losing game of catch-up.

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The Pattern

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Here's what happened to companies that won:

• They let machines do machine work
• They let humans do human work
• They stopped treating AI as optional

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What To Do

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The solution is simpler than it seems. Start small. Pick one aspect of your customer service to automate. Test it. Learn from it. Then scale.

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Don't try to boil the ocean. Just stop the bleeding.

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Remember what happened to companies that were late to mobile? This is bigger.

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This isn't one of those "wouldn't it be nice" situations. This is a "adapt or die" moment, and you can't ignore what's happening to your business.

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The really interesting question isn't whether to use AI. It's what happens to the companies that wait too long to start.