With online sales across the Black Friday weekend hitting US$5 billion in the UK in 2025, new data published by Revolution Beauty and CM.com shows a record-breaking number of customer enquiries handled by artificial intelligence across the weekend.
During the Black Friday sales period, Revolution Beauty’s AI chatbots handled nearly a quarter of all customer queries end-to-end without the need for an agent handover. This meant less queries reaching human agents, freeing up time for other essential tasks. Alongside this, the power of channel diversity was on full display with 29 per cent of all customer queries resolved by agents on WhatsApp – up from 4 per cent in the 2024 Black Friday period.
Together, these changes contributed to an excellent and well-controlled performance for the global beauty brand when it came to customer service. Compared to Black Friday 2024, queries reaching the customer support team were almost 60 per cent lower. Within this environment, AI chatbots, WhatsApp and improved self-service played an important role in resolving routine questions earlier and ensuring agents could prioritise complex cases. At the same time, Revolution Beauty did not experience the infamous Black Friday close-of-business backlog with unresolved queries by the end of the weekend falling 95 per cent compared to the previous year.
The improvements seen over the Black Friday weekend will transform how Revolution Beauty approaches the rest of the peak shopping season. In December 2024, close-of-business open query volumes climbed sharply during the Black Friday weekend and stayed elevated through most of the month. This year, only a small number of more complex queries are being left open by close of business each day, eliminating the December hangover from Black Friday.
Since deploying CM.com’s Mobile Cloud Service, the company has seen team productivity increase by 50 per cent compared to its previous system. That foundation of efficiency enabled Revolution Beauty’s support team to confidently tackle the Black Friday rush with a blend of automated assistance and live expertise to provide the best experience for its customers.
Steve Griffiths, Head of Digital Development at Revolution Beauty, commented: “It’s been a record-breaking weekend for us. We’ve seen huge demand for our Beauty Advent Calendar and Miracle Cream, which has led to a rise in queries around products and deliveries as people try to make the most of deals before they disappear. We’ve always prioritised customer service and having AI-assisted chatbots working in sync with our team of service agents meant every customer got the help they needed, fast. People have changed how they like to communicate, and as a brand it’s crucial we keep pace – meeting them on the channels they prefer, whether that’s WhatsApp or elsewhere.”
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