Omnichannel Orchestration in Holiday Promotions for the Best Engagement

The holiday stretch from Black Friday to New Year’s, with regional moments like St. Nicholas Day, compresses twelve months of demand into six high-pressure weeks. Promotions flood every channel, ad costs rise, and customer patience falls. Channel blasts rarely work. Orchestration does. Brands that coordinate OTT messaging such as Viber Carousels and Lists, RCS/RBM on Android, and Conversational AI in support centres convert intent faster, protect service levels, and keep satisfaction high. This article shows how to choreograph those channels so they work together.  

Who This Is For, And What “Good” Looks Like 

If you run growth, CX, or service operations in retail and e-commerce, banking, telco, or travel, your holiday goals align. You want revenue growth, controlled support costs, and a consistently great experience under heavy load. “Good” means strong opt-in growth before the rush, frictionless conversion during peak days, and calm, well-routed service after orders ship. Expect clear SLAs, higher first-contact resolution, lower average handle time, and a clean split between automated containment and agent escalation. 

Assigning Roles: How Each Channel Contributes

Treat channels like a coordinated crew, each with a clear job, with OTT and RCS leading the rich, guided flows: 

• Rich swipeable cards (e.g., Viber Carousels, RBM rich cards, WhatsApp multi-product messages where available) tell the story visually. Use them for discovery, bundles, side-by-side comparisons, and limited-time drops. 

• List-style selectable options/quick replies (available across OTT/RCS) remove friction when a choice is needed: size, colour, pickup store, delivery slot, return reason. Keep options mutually exclusive and concise. 

• RCS/RBM verified threads give Android users trusted, visual journeys with suggested replies and embedded actions — ideal for tracking, returns, guided add-ons, and checkout support. 

• Voice & calls complement messaging for time-sensitive or high-emotion tasks. Where appropriate and consented, consider Viber Business Calls (VBC) for quick outbound resolution or scheduled callbacks during peak. 

• Conversational AI can efficiently handle sales, providing product recommendations, guiding customers through the purchase journey, and offering multi-level support. Voice AI can be particularly effective for handling high-emotion, multi-step, or urgent tasks in your support centre. It can answer stock and delivery queries, process address changes, initiate returns, resolve payment issues, and, if necessary, escalate requests with full context. 

• Live agents take exceptions, complaints, and high-value consultative sales. Send transcripts and structured context ahead of handoff to avoid repetition. 

• SMS is a vital, dependable channel for many audiences and an essential companion to OTT/RCS. Use it for OTPs, delivery updates, pickup codes, appointment reminders, and critical confirmations — especially when rich channels are unavailable or a delivery report indicates failure. 

The value does not come from any single channel. It comes from handoffs that maintain context and keep the next step obvious. 

A Seasonal Calendar That Puts OTT And RCS First 

3–4 weeks before the peak (warm-up and consent building). 

Grow OTT and RCS audiences ahead of the rush. Use on-site prompts, email, and owned media to start verified Viber and RCS threads. Your welcome sequence should set expectations, let people choose frequency, and collect high-value preferences with Viber Lists, for example apparel sizes, favourite categories, or nearest store. Every answer becomes a targeting signal for peak days.

Peak week: Black Friday and Cyber Monday (conversion at speed). 

Start your campaign where your customers already are — in their preferred OTT or RCS chat. In OTT, highlight top bundles through a Carousel, while RCS can guide shoppers with quick replies like “Men’s,” “Women’s,” or “Kids,” followed by prompts such as “Show sizes in stock” or “Show pickup today.” Within the same OTT environment, use Lists to capture preferences (up to 5 options) and keep each card with a clear call to action. Voice AI can handle high volumes of product or availability queries, ensuring instant support. If delivery fails on any OTT or RCS channel, send an SMS fallback containing only the essential update — such as delivery confirmation, a pickup code, or an authentication link. This way, each channel plays a consistent role in one connected experience: OTT as a rich, conversational touchpoint for browsing and engagement, and SMS as a reliable channel for time-critical notifications. 

St. Nicholas and Christmas period (gifting and logistics, roughly 1–2 weeks before each date). 

Let’s use Viber as an example. Curate Viber Carousels by age, interest, or price band. Use Lists for gift wrap choice, pickup store, or delivery slot selection. Voice AI covers cut-off times, gift receipts, and delivery-by-date questions. As logistics tighten, shift from promotion to reassurance with RCS order trackers and quick actions. If RCS is unavailable, send an SMS update that includes any code or appointment details. This flow works equally well with other OTTs like WhatsApp, and with RCS.

Post-Christmas to mid-January (returns and exchanges). 

Use OTT channels with quick replies and List options to capture instant customer feedback and understand their experience. Enable customers to quickly arrange their exchange or return through a simple List for reason and preference. Voice AI instantly confirms the next step — whether scheduling a courier pickup or booking an in-store visit — and sends a confirmation. Should the main channel be unavailable, a short SMS provides the confirmed slot or drop-off details. 

Creative Patterns That Carry the Load 

Carousels in OTTs. Limit to three to five cards per drop. Use short headlines, consistent price badges, and cohesive imagery. Give each card one primary action. For bundles, show how items fit together, for example gloves, scarf, and beanie as one look. 

List Messages. Cap at five mutually exclusive options, and write labels in plain language. After selection, immediately confirm what will happen next, for example “Size M confirmed. Delivery still on Thursday.” If a second choice is needed, present it in a new message for clarity. 

SMS fallback. One message, one job. Use it for timely, reliable reach: OTPs, codes, slot confirmations, last-mile updates. Include any essential details directly in the text so customers can act without opening a link. 

Accessibility and tone. In voice, assume background noise and accents. Keep sentences short, ask confirmatory questions, and offer a transfer after two failed attempts. In written channels, use emojis sparingly and consistently to signal discount, delivery, gift, or urgency. 

Four Vertical Snapshots 

Retail and e-commerce

Start where the shopper is: Viber, RCS, or app, and surface Black Friday bundles with quick picks. Use structured choices to capture size and colour and write those preferences back to the profile. If they ask about store stock (“in my size at local mall”), a voice assistant can check availability, reserve, or arrange next-day courier. Order status and actions (track, change delivery, support) appear as a simple card in the current thread; if a rich message can’t land, send a short SMS with the pickup code or reschedule link. 

Banking and financial services

Let the customer compare card options inside their active conversation — clean summaries, fees, perks — and collect must-haves like cashback, miles, or digital-only via quick selections. A voice assistant can raise limits, set travel notices, or start disputes without leaving the flow. When mandatory disclosures need a different format, follow with a concise SMS acknowledgement and a secure link to the full notice, preserving the audit trail. 

Telco

Meet the subscriber in their ongoing thread to show holiday bundles and data add-ons, with one-tap requests for eSIM activation or a store appointment. A voice assistant handles number portability and coverage questions and can provision add-ons in real time. Plan changes and usage meters are confirmed right in the conversation; if a confirmation fails on a rich channel, an SMS follows with the updated allowance, so nothing is missed. 

Travel

Present New Year city-break options where the traveller already is — dates, hotels, indicative pricing — with quick filters for weekend windows and budget bands. A voice assistant can finalize baggage and seats, then drop a confirmation back into the same thread (OTT/RCS/app). If the session times out or connectivity drops, send an SMS with booking codes so they can pick up later without repeating steps.

Measurement That Keeps Everyone Honest 

Treat the season like a live experiment with clear guardrails. 

• Acquisition: growth of verified OTT and RCS threads, preference completion via Lists, and share of profiles with at least one preference. 

• Commerce: revenue per messaging session, assisted conversions from Carousel flows, average order value uplift when Lists precede checkout, and cart recovery from RCS reminders. 

• Service: containment percentage for top intents, deflection to self-serve, AHT and FCR by intent, and post-interaction CSAT. 

• Quality and trust: spam complaints, opt-out rates, delivery success by channel, and verified sender usage. 

Run multi-armed tests. Vary Carousel card order, List labels, send times, and handoff paths such as OTT to RCS or OTT to Voice AI. Read results daily in a shared dashboard. The best path is usually the shortest path with the least uncertainty. 

Implementation Checklist That Holds Under Pressure 

1.  Map the top 15 intents across sales and service. Set automation targets and clear escalation rules.
2.  Script Voice AI in your brand tone with confirmatory phrases and short prompts. Preload a seasonal knowledge base from last year’s tickets.
3.  Prepare product feeds for Carousels, including price and stock badges and promo windows. Connect them to your catalogue to avoid showing out-of-stock items.
4.  Connect systems for CRM, order management, payments, and ticketing, so each action writes back and is visible to agents.
5.  Set compliance guardrails for verified senders, consent logs, quiet hours, and clear opt-outs in every thread.
6.  Run a daily war room with marketing, CX, operations, and engineering. Review real-time metrics and keep rollback plans ready for any broken flow.
7.  Pilot fast. Ship one OTT or RCS flow for each holiday moment. For example, a Viber Carousel to List to checkout journey for Black Friday, and a late-delivery RCS tracker to Voice AI reschedule journey for December. Scale what works.

Closing Thoughts: Turn Peak Pressure into Peak Performance

Orchestration turns noise into momentum. When Viber Carousels and Lists, RCS/RBM, and Voice AI each do the job they are best at, and hand off cleanly, you shorten the path to purchase, keep promises after the sale, and prevent your support centre from buckling under demand. You do not need a moonshot to begin. Pick one high-impact journey for each holiday moment, wire the data spine, set clear KPIs, and review results daily. Ship, measure, improve, and carry the stronger playbook into Q1.

GMS can help you bring this entire playbook to life. As an end-to-end partner for Viber Business Messages and Calls, RCS/RBM, SMS, and AI-powered assistants, we connect your existing CRM, ecommerce, and care systems into a single orchestration layer. Our team supports you with journey design, consent and compliance setup, template optimisation, and performance reporting — so every channel plays its role, handoffs stay seamless, and your holiday communications stay fast, trusted, and measurable. Talk to a GMS expert to map your first orchestrated holiday journeys across Viber, RCS, SMS, and AI — and turn this season’s pressure into next season’s advantage.