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Are You Providing Proactive Customer Service?

Author: Duneel Muthubandara | | July 26, 2022


 

Proactive support is getting a lot of attention as the next best thing in customer service. All you need to do is search the internet and you’ll find a wide range of articles emphasizing the importance of being proactive to help your customers love your service.

Proactive vs. Reactive Customer Service

Most customer support teams use reactive customer service techniques. They wait until the customer has a question or a problem, and then help them get the answers they need. Proactive support means that you can anticipate what a customer’s issues will be and you address them, sometimes even before the customer knows they need to ask the question.

Proactive support is important because it allows you to strengthen your relationships with your customers. This will translate into keeping your customers satisfied so they become more loyal. It can also create advocates for your business. People who are happy with your service will be glad to talk about it with friends and associates.

The question many customer support teams have is how they can move from reactive to proactive customer service, and here are some places to start.

Obtain Customer Feedback

A critical part of proactive service is obtaining customer feedback. After all, if you want to know what your customers think, or what their biggest issues are, the most effective way to find out is just to ask them.

When you set up the technology and a process for analyzing and responding to customer feedback, you’ll see a number of advantages.

  • You’ll learn about your customers. Today, getting customer feedback is much easier than it’s been in the past. When you have a brick and mortar business, it’s not very often that customers will stop to share their true feelings about your products and services or the customer service they receive from you. With digital technology, people are much more likely to respond to a request for feedback.
  • You’ll improve customer satisfaction. Feedback from customers lets you know what is working and what isn’t related to your offerings and your customer service.
  • You’ll encourage loyalty. Customers like anything that makes them feel important to you. When you ask their opinion, and especially when you address their issues, customers typically increase their loyalty to your brand. Whether you make changes in your customer service process or improve your offerings, customers will notice.
  • You’ll offer better products and services. Keeping up with the competition is always a challenge, but you can establish an advantage if you can get feedback from customers to set you on the right path. Markets are always changing, and your offerings need to change, too.

Create a Knowledge Base

Many customers like to help themselves rather than use an assisted channel such as a live agent. When you create a knowledge base, you’re giving your customers the opportunity to find their own answers. Knowledge bases can take the form of a database that customers can use to search for answers, and an FAQs page that answers the most frequently asked questions you receive.

Knowledge bases can also be a good tool for your customer service agents to use to get detailed information about a question or issue. Incorporating a knowledge base into your customer service technology is a big help.

In addition, a knowledge base helps you to provide a consistent answer to customer questions. It doesn’t rely on the skill of your agents since customers can perform their own searches to find the answers they need.

Personalize Your Customer Service

Customers that don’t get the answer they need during their first contact with you don’t like to start over again on another day or using a different channel. But, if you can personalize their service, it takes some of the sting away. Set up systems that can supply customer history to various departments such as customer service, sales, and field service.

When a customer needs to contact you again, the person they talk to will see the notes from their last interaction and be able to ask fewer questions and address the issue much more quickly.

How Can Datavail Help?

Datavail has created a white paper, “Use the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service Module to Delight Your Customers” that you can use to learn more about the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service module. This technology can address proactive customer service discussed above. Download the white paper today to see how Microsoft can assist you on your journey to proactive customer service.

In addition, Datavail is a Microsoft Gold Partner, and our experts can assist you in implementing the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service module, along with the other business modules that include Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, Marketing, and Field Service.

We can assist you in planning an installation, implementing it, or maintaining it. We can provide resources to augment your existing IT teams to ensure that you get the most value from your investment. Contact us today to discuss how our experts can make sure you get a good return on your investment.

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