To gain a strong foothold in the global sales market, it’s direly important for global brands — such as your own — to afford global customers top-tier customer engagement; high-quality engagement that leads to pleasant customer experiences (CX) is a major key to customer base growth, leading to long-term brand growth/brand loyalty and an ever-increasing competitive edge. As mentioned in the article, “Guide to White-glove Customer Service: How to Ensure Service Excellence,” customer service (CS) that goes beyond customer expectations improves customer retention numbers, fortifying a stronger brand reputation — and securing global sales success.

One surefire way to ensure your global business maximizes on long-term brand success is to include a proactive customer service strategy that meets pre-sales/post-sales customer questions/concerns before they surface — that is, to say, before customers feel the need to reach out to your customer service team(s). Such proactive customer service brings:

• Up-front Customer Connections: by offering proactive customer service, your customers can receive support at all times, leading to rapid rapport/trust, and creating a sense of customer value.
• Enhanced Data Collection: by facilitating proactive customer support, you can receive a more detailed collection of customer data/personal data which gives you a better understanding of your strengths/weaknesses — what you’re excelling at, where to improve, and how to move forward — ensuring long-term growth.
• Better Customer Loyalty/Sales Conversions: proactive customer support ensures single-purchase customers become long-term loyal customers, influencing word-of-mouth marketing/brand ambassadorship — which leads to a greater sales margin and future market share incrementation.
• Decrease in Support Requests/Tickets: with a forever-improving proactive customer service strategy, your brand can decrease the number of CS requests — which helps you save on costs and ensures your agents have time freed up to focus on other important CS activities.

So then, how do you create a viable proactive CS strategy that allows you to enjoy the above-mentioned advantages while ensuring your own brand customers enjoy top-tier CX via fantastic customer engagement that keeps them engaged for the long-term? Let’s get into how to be proactive in customer service and enhance your customer service representatives’ (CSRs) engagement with customers; we’ll provide you with an 8-step guide on how to be proactive in customer service and then introduce you to how Callnovo Contact Center can help you meet your proactive customer service goals.

8 Key Proactive Customer Service Activities to Enhance Your CSRs’ Customer Connections

Here’s a detailed guide on 8 crucial proactive customer service steps your brand’s CS team(s) can put into place — a viable means of how to be proactive in customer service and enhance your customer engagement — leading to customer-centric service that guarantees quality customer engagement, leading to fantastic CX:

Create a Substantial Knowledge Base

As knowledge bases contain company info., product/service info., articles, frequently asked questions (FAQs), video tutorials, and other info. on important topics, customers can independently-troubleshoot issues outside of CS; by ensuring customers have a complete knowledge base, your CS team(s) will ensure proactive customer service — because, they’ll anticipate possible customer issues beforehand and give customers access to valuable solutions.

Engage Customers/Prospects with eMail Newsletters

An intuitive way to stay in touch with current/future, possible customers is via email newsletters; you’ll then remain connected with customers/prospects and provide valuable info. Newsletters can include blog posts, industry news, new product/service announcements, events, etc.; no matter what’s included, content should accord with your company’s offerings. Newsletters are considered proactive CS if recurring customer issues are explained within, as well as if typical solutions are provided — coupled with product/service recommendations.

Offer Loyalty Programs

Each lifetime customer is invaluable for your return-on-investment (ROI); CS team(s) should never forget to show their appreciation for customers’ dedication/trust. Loyalty programs are great for this — as customers will be rewarded for their continual business and repeat dedication to purchasing/utilizing your products/services. Such programs are a form of proactive service because you’re providing special discounts/offers that enhance/supplement CX.

Provide a “Products you May Like” Recommendation Feature

A “Products you May Like” recommendation feature, for example, sets you up for higher sales because customers will receive recommendations that can enhance/supplement their experiences, leading to higher individual customer lifetime values; instead of having customers search for new products/services, you’ll influence their purchasing preferences. Recommendations can be based on individual buyer behavior — or via the algorithms — leading to an understanding of how customers have made similar, previous purchases; as a result, customers will feel like they’re being taken care of — and you’ll drive additional revenue. Recommendations can even extend beyond products/services; for example, Netflix recommends a variety of content to users based on their viewing history and ratings.

Ensure Customers Receive Surveys

Consumer feedback is essential for improving proactive CS — it’s impossible to know consumer expectations internally; the best way is simply by asking customers. Questionnaires are a grand way to gain info. on how to improve your company’s specific aspects; such questions as, “What could we have done more of?” and “How could we have improved your experience?” can be asked to gain insight into how to better be proactive. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey tool is — for example — crucial for gathering feedback as it collects qualitative/quantitative customer data.

Honesty/Owning Up to Mistakes is the Best Policy

Customers contacting you about glitches, technical errors, general issues, etc. can be very disheartening for your own CS team(s) — and for your customers. Hence, one best proactive CS practice is having your company honestly admit mistakes, letting customers know of arisen issues before they discover them independently. Your CSRs can apologize for inconveniences, assuring customers of their resolve to find a viable solution, and offering discounts/refunds when necessary. By practicing such a proactive CS strategy, you’re giving customers valuable solutions in case they’d need them for the future and/or offering refunds to alleviate the possible strain from faulty products/services — all so customers can receive a stress-free experience. Customers value this — as it shows them your keenness, honesty, and dedication to strong service value.

Monitor Social Media

As with gossip, scandals can spread through social media, making your business’ shortcomings publicly-visible; if that’s not monitored, you’re missing out on valuable opportunities to understand customers better. It’s best to observe your social media channels and track what’s being mentioned. Social listening can be conducted so you can follow related hashtags/keywords, opening doors for proactive customer service on social media channels; for example, let’s say a customer tweets about their frustration over a delay in product deliveries; you can directly and rapidly respond, offering a valuable solution.

Automate Scheduling Processes

Reducing customer effort is important; one manner to do this is via automatic scheduling — for example, via SMS. If a product requires routine maintenance, customers can be placed on automatic schedules to facilitate easy appointments. Another example: for cherished product/services, automatic payment plans can be offered so consumers can enjoy such products/services without having to remember to pay/re-subscribe each month; this practice proportions proactive support and service, reducing customer effort and providing customers with what they need to succeed.

Callnovo’s Call Center Outsourcing Solutions — Guaranteeing Enhanced Customer Engagement

To compliment the 8 above-mentioned proactive customer service tips, Callnovo Contact Center is more than able to support your business with excellent customer service outsourcing solutions, ensuring top-tier customer engagement that leads to heightened customer acquisition/retention and long-term brand loyalty.

Some of Callnovo’s outsourcing advantages are:

• High-quality Expertise — ensuring quality service with the utmost success; we ensure personnel are skilled in such areas as:
  ** interpersonal communication skills,
  ** customer-centric enthusiasm/service attitude,
  ** logical thinking skills,
  ** management/operations skills, and
  ** product/troubleshooting service experience.
• Omnichannel Support — ensuring accessible, rapid contact solutions through all comm. channels — guaranteeing always-ready support, leading to enhanced CX, influencing long-term customer brand ambassadorship/customer loyalty.
• Native Language Support — to ensure you can meet customers’ needs efficiently, conforming to cultural expectations, improving customer loyalty.
• Always-available Service — so you can maximize on customer satisfaction/CX by continually meeting customers’ needs without limits.

Conclusion

By following the above-mentioned guide on how to be proactive in customer service — following the proactive customer service tips — your CS teams can foster customer engagement that enhances CX, turning your customers into long-term brand ambassadors. To support you, we at Callnovo offer a comprehensive multilingual, omnichannel customer service outsourcing solution to help you meet customer expectations, improving customer acquisition/retention numbers, augmenting your brand reputation/loyalty, and securing long-term global sales success.