The definition of proactive customer service is to anticipate what customers need and deliver it before they realize it. You provide assistance, advice, or education beyond what customers expect. Apart from building a good brand image, knowing your customers' needs before they act will make them more likely to stick around. Customers love to see that you care about them and pay attention to the details. Here are 4 suggestions for SMEs on building proactive customer service.
1. Put empathy first
Knowing and understanding a customer's experience at any given moment is essential. Put yourself in their shoes and think like them. An initial reminder of an item left behind in a customer's digital shopping cart might be perceived as helpful, but constant reminders turn from proactive to annoying. Put empathy first in your proactive customer service experiences. Don't make decisions solely based on operational metrics. Listen to your customers' concerns and learn about their needs.
2. Get to know your customers
Can there be a healthy relationship when there is no effort to get to know the other person? The customer isn't just a number. Journey maps and personas give us a glimpse of what our ideal customers look like, but that does not mean we know them. For this reason, we need to listen to our customers as it helps us understand their needs better. Be attentive and read what your customers have to say. Find out what they have posted about your business on social media.
3. Build proactive teams
How much confidence do you have in your team to identify trends, be proactive, and think multiple steps ahead? If not, you'll have to train your team to be proactive. You may want to teach them the "next issue avoidance" strategy. Consider a conversation from the point of view of outcomes - what are customers trying to achieve? Get rid of roadblocks before they happen.
Understanding where your customers become frustrated will enable you to avoid their problems. Delivering proactive customer service involves identifying those moments of opportunity.
4. Educate your customers
It is always more beneficial to educate users upfront than solve their problems later. The key to proactive support is to create helpful content. Self-service has become a standard expectation for today's consumers. In Microsoft's Global State of Multichannel Customer Service Report, more than 90% of consumers expect that businesses have FAQ pages or self-service capabilities.
Final Thoughts
Build operational discipline.
Success starts from deciding to complete the 4 actions described above. Providing proactive customer service is not sustainable or scalable without operational discipline. Discipline and operations are essential to sustaining success.
Creating proactive customer service indeed requires both an outside-in perspective of the customer and an inside-out perspective of the company's process and operations. In the absence of a customer view, the service provided will not satisfy the customer's needs.
Be mindful of operational realities when you develop your proactive customer service strategy. To achieve this, you should talk to those who experience that reality: your front-line support staff and your customers. Co-designing the best experience with your front line and customers will benefit your business as they know more than you do.
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