Businesses thrive in long-term relationships. It is common knowledge that retaining a customer is not just simpler but also better for revenue and profits when compared to converting a new lead. Paying close attention to customers can help you create a positive experience for them.
By default, most businesses adopt a reactive customer support strategy, which means that they resolve customer service issues after they arise. However, proactive customer support is the winning approach to adopt for higher customer satisfaction and retention.
A Statista study shows that 66% of customers favor brands that reach out to them proactively. High customer satisfaction will translate into customer loyalty and eventually, higher returns.
What is Proactive Support?
Think of proactive support as instinctive problem-solving. Proactive customer support is foreseeing problems and resolving them before a customer gets the chance to escalate them. For instance, imagine your city is expecting a thunderstorm. A proactive support strategy would involve taking the weather report into consideration and sending your customer a raincoat in advance. Reactive customer service would be waiting for them to come into your store drenched and then offering them an umbrella. A business that is customer-centric will automatically turn to proactive support.
Four Reasons to Switch to Proactive Customer Service Now
Going the extra mile to predict possible customer issues and providing instant solutions via self-service or agent support is a smart business move. If you have been reacting to customer issues so far, here are four solid reasons why you should switch to proactive support right away:
1.Build a Loyal Customer Base
Proactive customer service is thoughtful. It shows a customer that you genuinely care about them instead of simply thinking of them as a source of revenue. A customer who feels appreciated is more likely to turn to your brand in the future and stick in the long run. Studies show that a loyal customer is five times more likely to buy from a business again and also four times more likely to give out a brand referral.
2. Boost Customer Retention and Profit
With increased customer loyalty comes higher customer retention leading to increased revenues and profits. Acquiring a new customer can cost anywhere between five to 25 times more than retaining an existing one, depending on the industry you are in. On the other hand, improving customer retention by just 5% can boost profits by 25%.
3. Reduce and Streamline Customer Tickets
The average customer ticket count says a lot about the business’s customer support team. A small customer ticket count is a good sign. A growing ticket number means that your customers are having more issues, more frequently. Proactive engagement identifies pain points before they arise, therefore nipping the problem in the bud before it escalates. This reduces the number of incoming tickets, leaving your support staff with more time to tackle bigger and pertinent issues.
4. Improve Quality
The tools you employ to monitor customer pain points can also become invaluable feedback to improve product or service quality. For instance, if you find that customers tend to have certain kinds of repetitive troubleshooting issues with your software, one way to reduce tickets would be to provide information on how to fix it in the FAQ section of your website or in the knowledge base. The other way, of course, would be to use this information to improve the software itself. This will boost your product’s quality and encourage more sales.
How to Implement a Proactive Support Strategy
It is never too late to pivot your customer support strategy and give customer experience a boost. Even if you have been following a reactive support approach so far, you can switch to proactive support now. Investing in a reliable customer knowledge base, improving customer engagement through live chat and social media communication, and focusing on providing personalized messaging are some ways to turn proactive.
Here are some tips on how you can get started immediately
- Put Your Customer at the Center of Your Business
Sure, the product or service you have for sale is integral to your business. However, if you don’t have takers, your business is redundant. Satisfied customers will return to your business and also refer you to others. To be a customer-centric business, you have to provide a seamless end-to-end experience, that is, a consistently positive journey from onboarding to grievance resolution. Putting customers’ needs and preferences above all else is a sure shot to a strong customer experience strategy. One way to ensure proactive customer support is to ask who makes the first move. If the answer is you, the business, then you are on the right track.
To follow a proactive approach, you have to be a good listener. While customer feedback from your website, forms or live chat channels are crucial, they are not enough. You have to keep your ears and eyes open to follow all conversations your customers are having about you. The age of social media has effectively changed the way customers communicate. If you are not paying close attention to what’s going on in that space, you will lose out on key opportunities.
- Be proactive on social media and respond to customers.
- Hire a dedicated team to handle your social media accounts.
- Never miss a single customer comment with AI-powered software. For instance, bots like Freddy can scan tweets for all mentions and prioritize responses.
- Engage with positive comments as well and thank customers for their support.
Everyone makes mistakes. However, how you respond to that situation makes all the difference. A defensive strategy may work in sports, but in customer support, it can often misfire. Instead, when you realize that there is an issue with your product or service, admitting your mistake will put you in charge of the narrative. Apologizing for your mistake before your customer even realizes there is an issue is an A-game proactive strategy. You can reach out to customers via your website live chat, social media, email, or support pages or forums. When you acknowledge your inadequacies, customers will view you as an empathetic business. You can then offer refunds, discounts or bonus offers as a remedial action.
- Give Your Customers More Control
Today’s customers are self-reliant. Most customers attempt to resolve common questions on their own before reaching out to a customer service agent. The hallmark of a business with effective customer support is to equip customers with self-service options. A comprehensive knowledge base with tutorials, detailed FAQs, blogs, virtual tours, and other relevant information can help customers solve their own problems. Make sure to update these sections regularly for the most effective support.
- Keep Communication Channels Open
Proactive customer service means being there for your customers whenever they need you, in any way they need you. This means your support needs to be accessible to your customers as well as new users round the clock, on all potential channels. The right software can ensure omnichannel support throughout the day.
For instance, Freshchat’s dynamic chat software will let you engage, sell, and support your customers from anywhere on the web. Our live chat supports self-service, providing smart answers to FAQs and extended self-help in over 33 languages. For more personal requests, your agents can reach out to customers on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Apple Chat, or Line Messenger after integration with Freshchat. At the same time, our friendly bot, Freddy, will be available 24×7 to respond to routine customer questions.
Frequently checking up on your customer service team’s strategy will help you improve customer experience. Proactive support means evolving constantly. Start by defining the customer support metrics that you think matter most to your business and monitor them regularly to note where you stand. Quantify customer satisfaction using CSAT ratings, follow conversation trends, first resolution times, average handle times, and other productivity metrics to measure how your proactive strategy is impacting overall customer service.
Takeaway
Improving customer experience and engagement via proactive support means putting your customers first. It is asking what is best for your customer and basing your business operations around it in order to gain customer trust.
A live chat tool like Freshchat can help you tighten the reins on your customer support strategy through round-the-clock engagement, AI support, and proactive campaigns. WOW, your customers with the best experience starting this instant!
