Improving
Customer Loyalty Through Proactive Communications
By Ben Levitan, EnvoyWorldWide
'Improving customer loyalty' has been the traditional mantra of the call
center since inception. As economic and regulatory pressures continue to
squeeze the enterprise, however, the need to ensure customer satisfaction
has reached a tipping point and has made the art of customer communications
a tenuous proposition. Too often, customer service professionals are
consumed with efforts to put out the fires of dissatisfaction, spending the
majority of their time resolving customer complaints and problems. Few call
centers have embraced the idea of proactive customer care ' the ability to
reach out to customers before they have a chance to become a frustrated and
dissatisfied incoming caller.
As call centers become more ingrained in strategic initiatives, they
require innovative thinking and models that leverage proactive customer
outreach programs that are cost-effective and efficient at mitigating
customer service issues before they arise. Customer notification services
can be an ideal solution for companies looking to deliver customer welcome
calls, payment reminders, new service/upgrade information and various other
personalized and value-added touches.
By proactively making contact at each step in the customer relationship
lifecycle, businesses can engender heightened customer loyalty while
diffusing potentially frustrating situations and more effectively allocating
agent time and resources.
The Interaction Begins
When a customer purchases goods or services, he or she begins an interaction
and ongoing business relationship with the enterprise. Good businesses
recognize the potential for profitably lies in how it maintains and
strengthens the customer relationship over time. Results are generated when
the enterprise makes it easy for a customer to do business with it. Because
customers generally place significant value on the quality and speed of
interactions, the quicker and easier the enterprise can make it for the
customer, the more likely he or she will remain a loyal consumer.
At almost every phase of the customer lifecycle ' from activating
accounts to answering questions ' the enterprise has the opportunity to
distinguish itself from the competition with customer care that anticipates
needs and streamlines the delivery of that information, making each
interaction quick and resourceful. While many companies understand the need
to personalize and streamline interactions, there is still a lag between
knowledge of the situation and actual implementation of the practice.
One of the main hurdles in streamlining the process is that most
customer-to-business communication is initiated by the customer. Inbound
calls to a call center immediately generate a reactionary feeling, as the
customer initiates the dialog. Oftentimes, these calls are of the routine
and repetitive variety, focusing on items such as account balances or
shipping times.
Inbound calls consume the majority of the bandwidth that most call
centers have, impacting staffing and costs. The inability to preempt inbound
inquiries can also have a negative impact on customer satisfaction as well.
The more times a customer has to call to resolve a problem or obtain
information, the more likely he or she is to become frustrated or
dissatisfied with the business, jeopardizing the relationship. As many
wireless, credit card and ISP companies have learned over the past few
years, increased customer frustration leads to churn. Given the enormous
economic and competitive pressures most businesses face, combined with the
mounting choices consumers have, preventing customer churn has become a
mantra readily embraced across all industries.
To combat frustration and customer churn, more companies are seeking ways
that will enable them to effectively communicate with the customer while
significantly reducing the number of inbound calls a contact center
receives. Companies can no longer wait for the customer to initiate the
dialog regarding products and services. To effectively communicate with the
customer and diffuse the potential for negative interactions, companies need
to alter traditional businesses practices and become more proactive in the
customer communication arena.
Getting Proactive ' Know Your Audience
For companies in any industry, a good proactive, outbound customer
communications program can be a tremendous competitive advantage. It
increases customer loyalty and retention while lowering the costs affiliated
with manual or agent-based outreach. Proactive customer care is a practice
that is designed to preempt inbound calls and lessen call volume by
delivering valuable information to the customer before the need to call into
a call center arises. As with any worthwhile customer care endeavor, the
first step in proactive communication is to develop an understanding and
knowledge base about the target audience.
Customer preferences should be the driver behind all proactive
communications campaigns. As demonstrated by the tremendous support and
advocacy of the do-not-call list, consumers don't want to be bothered by
outbound calls of limited value. Customers need to feel as if they are in
control of how they receive communications, and deciding when, where, how
and how often they are contacted. Proactive customer care means providing
customers with options that let them control the means of communications and
can be achieved by letting the customers opt-in to such services.
The purpose of a proactive campaign is not to bombard customers with
outbound communications but to provide relevant insightful information that
a customer would find valuable and worth picking up the phone to call and
find out about.
Getting Proactive ' Tailoring Information Delivery
Determining how and when to contact a customer is paramount to the success
or failure of a good proactive communications program. Proactive customer
programs need to be tailored to fit individual customers' preferences.
Businesses need to personalize the interactions, delivering the relevant
information when, where and how the customer wants.
Technology advances have provided customers with a growing choice of
multiple communications platforms. Along with traditional modes of
communications, like phone and fax, the proliferation of multiple
communications devices such as e-mail, wireless and SMS have created new
ways for customers to glean relevant business information. It also provides
businesses with the opportunity to further personalize their interactions.
Providing multiple avenues for the receipt of information provides new
opportunities for proactive customer care. Customers need to be able to
tailor the means of communications by having a device preference opt-in.
Enabling a customer to tailor the means and time of message delivery puts
him or her in control of proactively receiving the information, making
repetitive calls to the call center unnecessary.
Proactively pushing the information to the customer on his or her terms
lessens inbound call volume and deflects the opportunity for frustration to
set in, an important step in increasing customer loyalty.
Getting Proactive ' Information You Can Use
Generating customer loyalty usually means giving customers what they want.
Proactive customer communications follow this mantra by giving customers
control options, varying from how they want to be contacted to when they
want it; it also means they have an opportunity to complete transactions
rather than merely receiving information.
Providing customers with the relevant information they need deflects the
potential for inbound calls. Organizations across all industries have the
opportunity to provide proactive customer care. Following are some examples.
Telecommunications companies can notify customers if they are encroaching
usage thresholds and offer alterative minutes plans; warn them of service
disruptions; provide information on account balances and options to pay by
credit card; and welcome new customers and verify plan type and contact
information.
Financial services organizations can proactively keep borrowers up-to-date
on loan status; notify customers when they are approaching or have exceeded
spending limits; and integrate with fraud detection systems to alert
customers when suspicious activity occurs.
Insurers can speed up the claims settlement process by notifying
customers on settlement status; inform them of policy and rate changes; make
them aware of missing paperwork; and alert customer to new treatment
options.
Utilities can notify customers of overdue account balances; alert critical
care facilities of impending outages; and inform customers of rate changes.
A Side Benefit ' Reducing Labor Costs And Increasing Service Levels
Proactive customer care is designed to build customer loyalty and lengthen
the business relationship. In addition to augmenting the quality of customer
communications, outbound interactions also address a critical factor facing
many call centers today ' high labor costs. By automating the proactive
delivery of customer information, organizations can substantially reduce the
level of inbound call volume. These types of proactive customer
communications are well suited to offload the simple and repetitive calls
that can plague a call center and siphon productivity.
Proactively pushing information to customers, such as account balances
and expected ship dates, alleviates the flood of routine calls that can
oftentimes cripple productivity. As a result, call centers will be able to
dedicate more time to the critical problem calls and inbound inquiries that
need to be attended to due to threat of client loss.
The call center units of the enterprise are undergoing a transformation.
While federal regulations such as the do-not-call list have hampered the
marketing practices of the call center, increased competitive pressures have
forced the customer care business units to reexamine their business
practices to reduce customer churn. Enterprises increasingly need to
recognize that the path to profitability often lies in maintaining and
strengthening the business relationships with customers. Customers place
significant value on the quality and speed of interactions. When these
standards of measure are not met, customer frustration results, a step in
the direction of losing that customer's business.
As businesses in industries such as the credit card and wireless markets
continue to see their products and services become commoditized, the
mitigating factor in achieving profitably is increasingly becoming customer
service. A happy customer is a loyal customer, and a loyal customer tends to
be a profitable customer.
Ben Levitan is CEO of EnvoyWorldWide (www.envoyworldwide.com).
EnvoyWorldWide provides companies with a reliable communications network for
the delivery of time-sensitive and proactive notifications. Companies are
leveraging EnvoyWorldWide's enterprise notification services to drive
customer communication and retention efforts, enhance business continuity
initiatives and streamline the distribution of business-critical
information.
If you are interested in purchasing reprints of this article (in either
print or HTML format), please visit Reprint Management Services online at
www.reprintbuyer.com or contact a
representative via e-mail at
[email protected] or by phone at 800-290-5460.
For information and subscriptions, visit www.TMCnet.com or call
203-852-6800.
[Return To The February 2004 Table Of Contents]
|