Four Ways to Deliver More Proactive Customer Service
February 11, 2015
By Mae Kowalke, TMCnet Contributor
We all like a pleasant surprise. This is no less true for consumers when it comes to customer care.
Proactive customer service can be an unexpected delight for customers, both helping them with their issues early in the process and showing them that they matter.
Here are four ways that businesses can bring proactive customer service to their consumers, raising the customer experience and ultimately building repeat buyers.
Map your customer experience strategy. First, know thy customer. Start with identifying your customer segments and their personas, and planning out a customer experience strategy to reach these customers where they are most likely to need help. Not all ways of proactive customer service are right for every business or customer, so planning an appropriate strategy is key.
Use data to stay engaged. Let your data help you understand your customers so you can anticipate their needs and issues. Include feedback loops with your products if at all possible, so you can get early signs if a customer is having trouble. Leverage speech analytics in your contact center to identify customers who are dissatisfied or have an emerging need. The tools are there. Use them.
Stay engaged. Awareness is half the battle, and businesses need to stay in contact with their customers throughout the product lifecycle. This means regular interaction with customers, be it email, SMS, phone call or other means.
Leverage automation. One of the best ways to be proactive is to use automation solutions to bring this ongoing engagement with customers. This might be automated email campaigns with a solution such as MailChimp, or regular automated calls with a predictive dialer. The point is to set up contact touch-points where there is customer interaction — and automation -- makes this possible.
Proactive customer service is a competitive advantage now, but more businesses are getting wise to the need. Soon it will be more than just an advantage — it will be a necessity for all successful businesses.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson