Customer Service

Maximising Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Through Proactive Support Strategies

When thinking about customer service – an integral part of any business – the first thing that comes to mind is a room full of agents answering any incoming customer questions or helping them resolve their queries. Although 96% of customers acknowledge customer service as an important factor influencing their satisfaction and loyalty, 91% will leave without ever reaching out to customer service if they are unhappy.

So, what can companies do to provide quality customer service without forcing customers to contact them every time they have an issue or are unhappy with the service? The answer is proactive customer service.

What is proactive customer service?

Unlike traditional reactive customer service, where companies wait for customers to reach out and communicate their issues, proactive customer service focuses on anticipating customers' needs and pre-emptively offering solutions that would work best for them. The goal here is to solve customer pain points before they become issues and deliver high-quality support. This can take the form of anything from suggesting products they might need to proactively reaching out when an issue becomes apparent.

Proactive customer support can help businesses stay ahead of any potential issues, solving them before the customers have a chance to encounter them. Thus, helping create a positive impression on the customers, maximise customer satisfaction, and boost customer loyalty.

Benefits of proactive customer support

Proactive customer strategies have the potential to help both businesses and their customers, which can create an enhanced customer experience and overall better business outcomes. Here are some of the many reasons why you should focus on proactive customer support:

Prevent customer churn

Proactive customer support can help prevent customer churn – one of the biggest costs for modern companies – by proactively preventing customer problems. The result of being proactive is happy and engaged customers, who are less likely to leave your business.

Wow your customers

Getting customers on board is relatively easy; keeping them happy and engaged, on the other hand, is a challenge. Proactive support strategies can help you impress your customers, leaving a lasting impression by taking steps to address issues before they even occur. This is a great way to not only wow your customers but also differentiate yourself from the competition.

Reduce support costs

Being proactive helps you resolve small challenges before they become full-blown issues. As a result, you can save significantly on support costs, which otherwise would have been necessary to "put out the fires".

Encourage repeat purchase

Another big reason to be proactive about customer support is to encourage repeat purchases. When customers have a positive experience and are sure you will solve their problems before they snowball into bigger issues, they will not only come back to you in the future but also recommend your services to others.

Improve your product or service offerings

A proactive approach to preventing customer problems gives customers the opportunity to provide feedback early on. Such feedback is invaluable in addressing minor problems before they become a widespread issue and improving your product offerings to best address customer expectations and market trends.

Building proactive support strategies

Building proactive support strategies requires an in-depth understanding of your customers, their expectations, and their needs. Only through such understanding can you develop efficient proactive support strategies and train your team to support your objectives.

Here are some steps to help you incorporate proactive customer support strategies within your organisation:

Understand your customers

First and foremost, you need to understand your customers, their behaviour, and how they make purchase decisions. Such understanding can help you anticipate evolving needs and be proactive in solving any issues that may arise. Sending out customer surveys and encouraging open communication can help you achieve this.

Predict customer needs

Leveraging the mountains of data available and predictive analytics tools can help you reliably predict customer needs – what they need in a product, why they are buying it, and what the potential pain points are. These insights can help you tailor the customer experience, making the customers feel more engaged and valued.

Develop a plan

Based on your understanding of the customers and their needs, you can develop an effective customer service plan for your team to follow.

Train your team

Customer service agents and customers are used to dealing with reactive customer service strategies. Training and encouraging your team to be proactive can make it easier for both agents and customers to find a quick and satisfactory resolution to any issue.

Leverage customer service tools

Customer support outsourcing services and customer service tools can help build a robust customer profile – including demographics, motivations, and needs – to better understand your customers and help them more efficiently. Customer service automation tools can also help you speed up your service processes and resolve issues more efficiently without having to invest time and resources in repetitive tasks.

Monitor and adjust

No customer service strategy – reactive or proactive – is set in stone. You have to monitor the results to determine what is working and adjust where things are not working out.

How can Infosys BPM help?

Designing and implementing proactive support strategies on your own can be a challenge. However, you can leverage customer support outsourcing services to become truly proactive in addressing customer service challenges. From reducing costs and achieving performance optimisation to understanding churn reasons and boosting loyalty and retention, Infosys BPM support services can help you leverage the next-gen tools to offer an enhanced customer experience, maximise customer satisfaction, and improve customer loyalty through proactive customer service.