As rising demand rocks contact centers, proactive customer support seems like the perfect tonic.
Done well, it smooths over journey frictions, relieves the contact center, and lowers customer effort.
Well, this is the theory. Unfortunately, it is not always the reality.
The Current State of Proactive Customer Support
A 2022 Gartner study found that two-thirds of customers contact customer service after receiving a proactive alert, seeking further information or confirmation.
These contacts often flow through human-assisted channels, as proactivity creates confusion and unanswered questions.
As such, the study highlights a need to instill confidence in proactive communication, with many customers only contacting to confirm the alert was not a scam.
Gartner’s advice: prioritize outreach for urgent issues.
This brings us to the first of three vital steps for moving to proactive customer support. These are:
- Uncover what matters most
- Offer proactive guidance when it matters most
- Deliver this where the customer will see it
By following such an approach, brands are more likely to succeed in switching to a proactive strategy.
What Matters Most
Manual ticket tagging is still the flavor of the month for many businesses aiming to gain an overview of their most critical demand drivers.
How accurate is this data? For many, it is dubious at best. After all, when busy, lots of contact center agents do not take the time to tag contacts correctly. Moreover, they often don’t know what the tags mean.
Nevertheless, for proactive support to tackle the most urgent issues, contact centers must have a transparent view of what those are.
Luckily, some CRM systems now take advantage of embedded analytics to automatically and accurately detect customer intent alongside sentiment. These metrics help quantify which contacts drive the most demand and frustration.
Then, dig into these and isolate route cause. Using this information, the contact center can develop a message that pre-empts critical customer needs.
However, before that, consider the possibility of removing the friction point altogether. Of course, most are upstream, yet – with good relationships – contact centers can provide guidance to eliminate issues once and for all.
When It Matters
To ensure proactive messages are relevant, contextual, and timely, draw out a customer journey map. Then, isolate where the issue occurs.
Next, identify the optimum touchpoint to forewarn the customer and consider utilizing real-time data to trigger a message there.
For instance, perhaps the message shares news of a shipment issue. Operations can then trigger a workflow that feeds from live data within the order tracking software.
Unfortunately, it is not always so easy to predict particular issues. Nevertheless, building relationships with other departments and harnessing their intel can make things much more manageable.
Building upon this point, a thought-provoking Kustomer report adds: