How to reach your customers with proactive communication

As the saying goes, ‘The best defense is a good offense,’ and being proactive in your customer relationships can deliver far greater levels of loyalty and revenue than you might otherwise expect.

If you’re working to address disappointingly low levels of customer engagement, or high cart abandonment rates, you might be wondering how you can improve your results and boost your bottom line. Proactive communication might be precisely what you need. According to Statista, 70% of global customers prefer brands that engage with them proactively, so approaching your audience before they come to you can deliver remarkable benefits.

We’re going to explore what proactive communication is, what benefits it can offer, how you might use it in your business, and how live chat software can make getting on the front foot a breeze.

What does proactive communication mean?

Proactive communication is all about getting ahead of events, rather than purely responding to them once they’ve occurred; it sits in direct contrast to reactive communication. Proactive communication techniques involve actively reaching out to your customers and having a conversation about important issues, stimulating engagement, and building a connection.

A proactive approach is powerful because it can help you prevent problems before they happen and deal with complaints before they’re made, or even spot opportunities for improvements. Every conversation with a customer has the potential to deliver benefits for your business. As part of your broader customer service strategy, proactive communication can help you stay flexible and alert to trends and changes in customer dynamics and help you deliver on any objectives that you’ve set.

Why should your business proactively communicate with customers?

Proactive communication has been shown to lift customer engagement rates for businesses in all kinds of sectors. Improving customer loyalty is about reducing customers’ effort levels and working hard to address their problems.

There are many benefits to a proactive approach:

• It shows that you care: Reaching out to your customers makes it clear that you’re interested in how they’re doing and how you might be able to help with their day. Making your customers feel cared for goes a long way to making them feel connected with and part of your business.

• You can address needs your customers may not even know they have: Deeper-level engagement means you can identify problems and opportunities early, helping customers get more out of your service and allowing you to work on improvements that you can offer. It can even make it possible for you to up-sell or cross-sell additional products.

• It improves your efficiency: Issues are often much more straightforward to solve when dealt with before they become serious, and proactive communication can also help you plan your customer service resources. That means a more productive, happier workforce.

• It builds trust and loyalty: Trust is at the cornerstone of any strong customer relationship, and proactively addressing problems contributes to laying the foundations for longer-lasting engagement. By sharing information transparently and honestly, you make it easy for customers to deal with your business, and as a result, build trust. That way, they’re more likely to see your company positively and stay loyal in the long run.

How can your business proactively communicate with customers?

Good examples of proactive communication all require planning. Here are a few of the critical steps to consider:

1. Don’t run before you can walk: Depending on the size of your organization, it’s essential to give yourself the time to put the right pieces into place. Look at the ways you can become more proactive with your existing communication, for example, by integrating your product with software that allows for omnichannel customer support at all times of the day.

2. Identify the low-hanging fruit.: There’s nothing wrong with claiming some easy wins. Take a look at your current provision: are there particular pages with high bounce rates? Is there a recurring complaint that your customer service agents have to deal with? Is there a specific campaign or product line that receives lower customer engagement? Find the areas with the most significant room for improvement, and identify straightforward ways of injecting proactive communication into the customer relationship. If, for instance, you already run a live chat function on a critical product page, it’s easy to set up more proactive messaging for visitors to engage with.

3. Test it, track it, and improve it: Setting clear goals is essential for measuring improvements in customer engagement. Good customer service is all about effective communication, so ask your customers what they’re enjoying and what they’re struggling with. Be honest when you’ve made mistakes and respond positively, rather than waiting for your customers to complain. Not only can that form part of your proactive communication strategy on its own, but it will also help you continue to hone and improve your efforts.

How can live chat software help with proactive communication?

These days, customers seek increasingly convenient methods for connecting with businesses, such as via social media and apps, and live chat has been a big part of that revolution. It allows customers to receive quick, personalized answers to their questions and expert advice that addresses their needs. It is fast becoming one of the most critical communication tools for businesses.

Quality live chat software will let you automate proactive messaging on crucial parts of your website, targeted at your potential customers’ likely needs then. Based on the conversations you’ve had with existing customers, you can identify common purchase obstacles and critical benefits that you can use to push prospects over the line to a sale.

Live chat is also an excellent tool for addressing potential customer concerns, particularly for software providers. Consider targeting customer milestones with follow-up chat alerts and emails that speak to their situation and possible needs, based on other customers’ experiences.

Elsewhere, live chat can help you deliver greater transparency. According to the Baymard Institute, 49% of cart abandonments are high extra costs, such as shipping, taxes, and fees. You can address this with more transparent pricing at an earlier stage in the transaction: proactive live chat messaging can answer complex products and services. The personal touch it provides is also particularly effective in helping customers find exactly the right product or service for them.

Freshchat’s dynamic chat software can also support self-service, with interactive FAQs and self-help, providing an even faster response time. Agents can reach customers across WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Apple Business Chat, or Line Messenger for more complex needs.

Ready to plan, not react?

Regularly assessing your customer communication strategies is an integral part of any relationship-building campaign, and it’s clear there are many benefits from getting on the front foot with your communications.

Freshchat’s campaigns feature allows you to schedule triggered messages and notifications in the form of chat alerts and emails targeted towards specific moments in the buyer journey or customer experience. This helps you address customer needs and helps build a deeper connection with your business.

All in all, anything you can do to make a customer feel supported and cared about is sure to increase your loyalty, boost your engagement rates, and improve your bottom line.