The holidays are our support team’s busiest time of year. This article covers how our support team is helping you and your clients during this hectic season, as well as what you can do to help us help you.
If you use AI LLMs such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc.
Public AI systems such as Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT are often incorrect and don't have access to the same level of information that Pic-Time's own internal AI has, so for the most accurate answers you should contact us through our Support channels.
While even our own AI Bot can sometimes provide inaccurate information we continuously monitor and regularly update it.
Pro Tip: Please avoid sending AI generated emails. Only provide a concise, brief message that actually relates to your business and particular issue/request, as that is likely to receive a more accurate response from our AI Bot, and a faster response from our human team.
In addition, we highly recommend perusing our Help Center. Every article and tutorial video is 100% written, edited, and tested by human photographers to provide you with actual, real-world scenarios and answers to your questions. Plus, you may learn something new about Pic-Time to better your business!
Support Team Background
The Pic-Time support team works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We have agents working around the world, covering all time zones and working through the weekends.
At times, unexpected spikes in traffic may cause longer response times. If this is the case, your enquiry will wait in the queue for the next available agent. Our team can see the queue increase, and will call in additional help if needed. The team takes great pride in keeping queue times short and manages spikes in traffic as they arise.
Support traffic increases from October to December due to the holiday season; however, this type of spike is expected, and our team prepares for it. In previous years, we have seen traffic increase 4-5 times over the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend. It is unfeasible to quadruple our team size for a weekend to handle this load and maintain the same response times you enjoy throughout the year. Instead, we have added additional measures to help manage the load.
Below you will find some of the measures our support team is taking to help keep queue times as short as possible, prioritize time-sensitive enquiries, and get you the answers you need.
1. Our AI Bot
General enquiries to our chat support are first directed through our AI Bot. When you ask a question to our AI Bot, it reads text from our extensive Help Center written by our educational content team, and generates a concise answer for you. You can click the link in the answer to the source article for more detailed information or to verify the accuracy of the AI Bot response.
We highly encourage you to utilize Pic-Time’s AI chatbot - it's the fastest way to get an answer. If the response doesn’t help, you can type/ask the bot to talk to a person to be transferred to our human team.
We love the AI Bot because it helps answer your straightforward questions very quickly, while freeing up our support agents to answer those tougher, nitty-gritty questions when you need us.
2. Prioritization of chats
Some topics are more time-sensitive than others, including help accessing your account, uploading photos, or your client needing help to place an order. Time-sensitive topics will be prioritized so our human support team can deliver help quickly to those who need it most.
While some chats are prioritized, you can have peace of mind that every inquiry will receive a reply, whether from Pic-Time’s AI Bot or a human team member if you need additional help. Please avoid opening multiple chats about the same topic, as this will only slow our agents down.
3. Help Center Articles
We provide a client-facing Help Center that offers additional resources for you to share with your clients if they require guidance when using the gallery. The articles are white-labeled, meaning they do not reference any other photographer or Pic-Time, so you can use them in your own resources. By giving proactive support to your clients, you help reduce the load on Pic-Time’s support team, allowing them to focus on tougher questions.
In addition to the client-facing Help Center, in 2026 so far, we’ve added 64 new articles to our Help Center for photographers, and updated and simplified over 300 articles. Our team continually creates and updates resources throughout the year.
4. Additional Support hours
Providing fast, kind, and informative help is one of the core goals at Pic-Time. Most of our support team are photographers, so they understand your needs firsthand. We hire additional support agents early in the year so they are skilled up and ready for the busy holiday season. We conduct a detailed analysis of trends in previous years to forecast additional scheduling required for peak holiday times. The support team works additional hours during the holiday season to account for the increased traffic.
Please be kind to our support team, they work long hours and are here to help. 🙏
5. More Tips for Seeking Support
Longer queue times from October to December are to be expected. To get help, the steps we recommend are:
First, check out our Help Center. If you don’t find what you need, go to step 2.
Contact our support team via the chat widget or email [email protected].
When speaking with the chat, give the AI Bot a chance. If it doesn't help, type/ask the bot to talk to a person to be transferred to our human team.
In the chat, leave specific information such as gallery name, emails, screenshots, and the particulars of your question or issue, so the team can start on your request right away. The more specific information you include upfront, the faster they can help.