Promotions 2025: How to Optimise Customer Relations Before, During, and After?

Understand New Consumer Behaviours in 2025

In 2025, the rules of consumer behavior have evolved in response to lasting economic uncertainty. As highlighted in McKinsey’s State of the Consumer 2025, rising prices are the dominant concern across global markets. Rather than reducing overall consumption, most consumers are now actively seeking deals on nearly every purchase—a shift that has made promotions more influential than ever.

This new mindset has also led to a rise in cross-category trade-downs, where shoppers spend less in some areas to preserve the ability to “splurge” in others. Promotions have thus become not only a tool for short-term revenue but also a way to demonstrate value, build trust, and strengthen long-term customer relationships.

To capitalize on this new reality, businesses must go beyond traditional sales tactics. Success in 2025 lies in creating consistent, personalized, and frictionless customer experiences—before, during, and after promotional events.

Before the Promotion: Plan Strategically and Build Anticipation

Communicate Early and Proactively Across Channels

Getting ahead of customer expectations begins with clear and timely communication. In 2025, mobile-first channels like SMS, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger are indispensable for spreading the word about upcoming promotions. These platforms offer unmatched immediacy and open rates, helping you reach customers where they are most active.

Personalisation is key to breaking through the noise. Campaign messages should be tailored based on customer profiles, preferences, and purchasing history—transforming a generic promotion into a compelling, targeted offer that drives action.

Optimise your internal resources by adjusting your customer journeys

With promotional periods typically driving a sharp rise in customer interactions—ranging from product questions to delivery tracking and post-purchase support—pressure on service channels can escalate quickly. To manage this demand effectively, businesses must design smart, omnichannel customer journeys that reduce unnecessary strain on human agents.

One of the most strategic approaches is the use of call deflection, which involves redirecting routine or low-complexity inquiries from traditional phone lines to more scalable digital channels such as SMS, email, live chat, AI-powered chatbots, or online FAQs. This not only improves response times but also empowers customers to resolve issues on their own, enhancing the overall experience.

For example, during a high-volume promotional campaign, customers who purchase discounted items could be automatically routed to a dynamic FAQ page tailored to common questions. Meanwhile, intelligent routing systems can ensure that more urgent or sensitive requests are still handled by live agents—ideally those best suited to the issue at hand.

By adopting these self-care and automation strategies, companies can maintain high service levels even during demand surges, ensuring that every customer interaction is handled efficiently and appropriately.

Prepare for Spikes with Operational Resilience

High-volume events bring a higher risk of technical issues. That’s why business continuity planning is essential. In 2025, businesses must be equipped with disaster recovery plans and automated backup systems to maintain service availability during promotional surges. These should be tested in advance and include fallback strategies like alternative contact channels, secondary data centers, and cloud scalability options.

During the Promotion: Empower Agents, Monitor Quality, and Stay Agile

If you have already experienced a promotional event, you know that your business volumes will increase. Here are our tips on how to cope in real time.

Support Agents with Real-Time Tools and Knowledge

To deliver quality customer service under pressure, your team needs access to dynamic, reliable tools. A modern contact center in 2025 integrates an AI-powered knowledge base, capable of interpreting natural language and instantly delivering accurate responses. This tool not only helps agents but also powers customer self-service portals and chatbots.

Alongside this, agents benefit from real-time access to CRM data, including customer history, preferences, and past interactions. A 360-degree view of the customer enables fast, contextualized support and contributes to a smoother, more satisfying experience for the buyer.

Up-to-date scripts and reference guides, integrated into the agent interface, help ensure consistency in messaging across the team and reduce errors, especially when launching complex or time-limited offers.

Elevate Performance with Quality Monitoring and Coaching

Peak periods can test even the most experienced teams. That’s why live supervision tools—including silent listening, whisper coaching, and real-time messaging—are essential to guide agents, correct mistakes on the fly, and reinforce best practices.

These features also provide valuable data for real-time quality assessments, helping supervisors identify trends, spot training opportunities, and maintain a high standard of service during busy times.

Strengthen Collaboration and Maintain Team Cohesion

Promotional campaigns often involve cross-functional collaboration and remote coordination. Use collaborative tools such as instant messaging, internal calls, and screen sharing to ensure teams can communicate rapidly and share critical information.

Even in hybrid or remote setups, these tools help maintain alignment, resolve customer issues faster, and keep morale high during intense sales periods.

After the Promotion: Measure, Learn, and Strengthen Relationships

After the promotional operation, it is time to follow up and assess the initial results. Here are our 2 tips for flawless follow-up :

Collect and Analyse Feedback Immediately

Once the campaign ends, feedback should begin. Promptly sending customer satisfaction surveys via SMS, email, or messaging apps allows businesses to capture honest, in-the-moment insights. These can be used to calculate key experience metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Effort Score (CES).

Qualitative feedback from open-ended questions can also highlight specific friction points or unmet expectations—valuable input for future improvements.

Monitor KPIs to Refine Future Strategy

Post-campaign analysis should focus on both operational and experiential indicators. Among the most important metrics to track are:

• Service Level: The percentage of inquiries responded to within the target timeframe, reflecting overall responsiveness.

• Repeat Contacts: A high rate may indicate unresolved issues or poor first-contact resolution.

• Volume Trends: Comparing current volumes to historical data helps plan for future resource allocation.

• Average Handling Time and Wait Times: Indicators of system efficiency and customer patience.

Cross-analyzing these KPIs with agent performance and customer feedback provides a full picture of your promotional campaign’s effectiveness—and reveals where to optimise next.

In 2025, Promotions Are a Strategic Customer Relationship Opportunity

Promotions in 2025 are no longer isolated sales events. They are brand-defining moments that test your ability to build trust, deliver relevance, and create frictionless customer experiences. Businesses that succeed in these areas not only boost short-term revenue but also cultivate loyalty that extends well beyond the sales window.

By combining smart communication strategies, AI-driven support tools, robust quality monitoring, and post-event analytics, companies can transform seasonal campaigns into long-term relationship builders.

About INO CX

INO CX is a cloud-based contact center solution provider and licensed telecom operator. We empower businesses to deliver exceptional, omnichannel customer and employee experiences. From voice, SMS, messaging, and email to payments and CRM integration, our unified platform helps you communicate efficiently, personalize interactions, and scale with confidence.

Contact us to learn more.