Proactive support and proactive service both provide delightful experiences. However, proactive support focuses on anticipating and solving customer issues, while proactive service involves offering complementary opportunities to enhance the customer experience.
The mentality of driving proactive customer service is that your company aims to exceed customer expectations, extending beyond the point of purchase. You want to demonstrate trustworthiness and foster customer loyalty by providing everything necessary for the best experience. Yet, not all customer service can be proactive. Reactive customer service is equally valuable but applicable in different scenarios.
Elevating Customer Experiences with Proactive Customer Service
#1 Ask for Customer Feedback
Improving proactive customer service requires valuable input from consumers. One common mistake made by companies is assuming they understand customer wants and needs internally, which proves challenging. The simplest way to gain customer understanding is by directly soliciting feedback.
Using questionnaires, businesses can gather information on how to enhance different aspects. Questions like “What more could we have done?” or “How could we improve your shopping experience?” provide meaningful insights for proactive engagement with future customers.
#2 Learn From Conversation Recordings
Your company can benefit from an app to record phone calls. This way you can collect information and transfer it to the data analysis department. With the app to record phone calls, you can collect a lot of valuable information about customer preferences, their pain points, difficulties with use, and advantages over competitors. These are all extremely valuable assets for any business that seeks to better know its customers and meet their needs.
#3 Select Products That the Client Might Like
A recommendation feature like “Products You May Like” provides proactive customer service. It sets customers up for success by suggesting products that can enhance their experience. Instead of searching for new products, customers are informed of what they should consider buying.
You can generate these recommendations based on individual buyer behavior or use algorithms to analyze the purchasing patterns of similar customers. You can also use customer feedback softwares to better understand customer requests. With powerful customer feedback software, you can learn about the interests and areas of activity of the client, and therefore improve the “Products You May Like” function.
#4 Get Ahead of Customer Complaints
Does your business offer technical support or troubleshooting assistance to customers in a proactive manner? This is crucial for staying ahead of customer complaints and mitigating negative reviews.
To be proactive, make sure your team is easily accessible and responsive through multiple channels such as phone, email, live chat, and social media (for example, Facebook or Instagram messages). This approach enables you to anticipate potential issues instead of handling a frustrated customer’s email after a long wait on hold, only to end up getting disconnected.
#5 Automate Scheduling Processes
Reducing customer effort is an integral part of proactive support. One way to achieve this is by providing automatic or SMS scheduling options. For instance, if your product requires regular maintenance, automate the scheduling process for customers and eliminate the need for manual appointments. Similarly, consider offering automatic payment plans to loyal customers, ensuring uninterrupted product usage without the hassle of monthly re-subscriptions.
#6 Initiate Contact Yourself
Did you know that 85 percent of customers prefer companies to contact them first, rather than having to reach out themselves?
If something doesn’t seem quite right, like not receiving an expected delivery within a certain timeline, you should always be the one to reach out. This shows care and concern towards your clients, which helps loyalty increase over time. After initiating contact, you’re likely to receive a much more positive response.
Even if there’s no issue, regularly engaging with your customers keeps you at the forefront of their minds and their inboxes. So, why wait? Take the initiative and initiate contact regularly.
#7 Offer a Loyalty Program
Customers require a significant commitment to engage with a company. Therefore, it is commendable for you to attract and retain lifetime customers. However, it is essential to consistently acknowledge and express gratitude for the loyalty and trust customers have placed in your business.
One effective method to demonstrate appreciation is through loyalty programs. By continually rewarding customers for their ongoing support, these programs actively enhance customer experiences. Through special offers and discounts, loyal customers receive supplementary benefits, improving their overall satisfaction.
#8 Create the Best Customer Service Team
Having a strong team in place is crucial for providing an exceptional experience to clients whenever they interact with your business. However, making the importance of customer support known throughout the entire company can be a challenge for support teams. According to a report by Hubspot, 40% of customer service leaders acknowledge that their company considers support as an expense rather than a catalyst for growth. It’s worth noting that a majority of leaders hold a different perspective. In the long run, prioritizing support-driven growth gives companies a competitive advantage.
#9 Monitoring Your Social Media
Just like gossip, company scandals can quickly spread across social media channels, exposing your shortcomings to the public eye. If you fail to monitor customer feedback on social media, you miss valuable opportunities to gain insights about your audience. Therefore, it’s crucial to stay attentive to your social channels and track what people are saying about your company. Utilizing social listening and following relevant keywords and hashtags related to your business opens up opportunities for proactive customer support on social media. For example, if a customer tweets about their frustration with a delayed delivery, you can promptly respond and provide a solution.
#10 Stay Ahead of Customer Complaints
Does your business offer technical support or troubleshooting assistance to customers in a proactive manner? Providing such support is crucial for anticipating and addressing customer complaints, as well as minimizing negative reviews.
To proactively offer this assistance, ensure that your team remains easily accessible and responsive through multiple communication channels such as phone, email, live chat, and social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram messages. By doing so, you can effectively address potential issues instead of dealing with frustrated customers who have waited on hold for an hour and subsequently got disconnected, resulting in angry emails.
Final Words
Ideally, customers shouldn’t have to approach you first. Instead of simply reacting to customer service needs, try taking a proactive approach. Anticipate customer needs, address potential issues before they arise, and proactively enhance the customer experience. This will boost customer retention and increase revenue. Remember that proactive customer service not only benefits customers but also supports teams.
