In this competitive world, the success of any business depends on the quality of customer services it provides to the customers.
If you’re running a business that provides services in the form of software (or SaaS) or any other to your clients, it is imperative that you have a strong team of customer service professionals ready to tackle any problem that comes in the way of your clients. Customers’ expectations are increasing and they demand instant solutions to their queries.
Conventionally, when the customers were having issues, they contact customer service and the issues were taken care of. This is called reactive customer service. But now businesses are adopting proactive customer service approach. This is more powerful as it shows commitment to make the customer happy. It proactively communicates with the customers and asks them if they are facing any issues. This will considerably reduce the number of inquiries you receive and will solve it before it becomes an issue and thus this increases customer satisfaction and loyalty.
And if you still don’t have a customer service network ready for your business needs, and to help your clients out, check out the following; it might just change your mind!
1. Help in retaining customers
According to McKinsey survey, “70% of buying experiences are based on how customers feel they’re being treated.” To stay ahead of the competition, it is must that you provide exceptional customer service to your customers. If you wish to bridge the gap between “good” and “great”, you will need to be proactive in fulfilling customer needs.
If you’re a company that sells products to customers in the likes of software, you’d want to provide them with the best services possible. And in a world where people believe more in the idea of “experience”, it becomes necessary for a company to provide the right experience to their clients. The term “connecting with the client” is gaining momentum, with the focus specifically on the fact that each and every need of their client is catered to well in advance.
Look at companies such as CornerstoneOnDemand. This is a cloud-services provider, with a client base of over 12 million users. What steps did they take to improve their growth? Retain their previous customers. So, if you think that you might be at a position where gaining clients seem challenging, retaining the ones that you have is a happy medium! And the best way to do that is to generate a strong customer service base & with a proactive approach.
By adopting proactive customer service approach, your company can deliver best customer service and thus will build a strong and long-term relationship with the customers and will boost customer loyalty.
If this still doesn’t convince you, consider a more advanced approach towards customer support, wherein companies such as Acquire.io are working towards providing a 24-hour service to their customers, whenever and wherever they need it. What makes it special is that time isn’t a constraint here. Customers and businesses from varied time zones reach out to get their queries solved.
Acquire offers proactive Live chat customer support to interact with the customers in real-time and guide them to make a purchase or to give instant solutions if they face any query.
“We are moving more and more towards live chat support because it makes it easier for us to quickly fix the problem.” – David Freer
More and more businesses opt for proactive live chat tool as it increases customer satisfaction and fulfills customers’ expectations. Customers get instant solutions to their queries just by chatting without waiting for days for email or phone. When live-chat used properly, proactive customer service can boost sales, and make the customer happy by fulfilling their expectations.
Studies show that customers are more likely to return to the websites to make a purchase that provides live chat option. Thus live-chat increases conversion rate and improves customer experience.
2. It helps in informing the customers about any mistakes, interruptions or any unscheduled issues before they arise
Customers can easily find out any interruptions in a matter of seconds. Regardless of how proactive your customer service team is mistakes or unscheduled issues will occur. Best way to handle such situation is to announce about such mishaps to your customer before they occur. Letting your customers know about mistakes will help you to build trust.
For example, if you’re planning a software testing or update, inform your customers proactively before the update takes place so that they get aware. Let your customers know about technical issues or shipping delays before you get a flood of emails and calls and this will build a long-term relationship and customers will feel more confident and as a result, they will get loyal to your brands.
3. It helps to customers for post-sale
Post-sales support is one of the best ways to impress your customers and to show how proactive you are. So with this proactive customer service approach, they can get the solution immediately and moreover this will help to build a long-lasting relationship with the customers.
Once the customer has made a purchase, your customer support team shall send an email asking if the product is okay or are they facing any issues. Sending a simple email will create a long-lasting positive impact on the customers and will improve customer service experience.
The customers can even raise their issues/ concerns and you can give solutions before it escalates and makes the customer unhappy.
4. Getting feedback from Customers
“We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.” – Bill Gates
When it comes to providing experience to the consumers, it is imperative that the experience is top-notch. And be it any business, the only way to improve your services is to work on the feedback provided to you by your customers. The feedback process plays a two-fold role.
The first benefit, which is as obvious as it might seem, is to help get an idea of what your consumers feel about your business. However, there’s another hidden benefit, which not many people are able to think about. It is the idea of connecting with the clients.
The only way to make sure that a client is satisfied with your product or services is to ask questions about the same! Underestimating the power of asking questions is a mistake a number of businesses commit. Dunkin’ Donuts, for instance, is one brand that has elevated to becoming a household name. But this success is partly thanks to the feedback it takes from every customer that comes to it, and from the idea of asking the right questions.
The customer support team works towards building up relations with the customers through personalized calls. After almost any purchase you make at the brand’s outlets, you’d receive calls related to feedbacks for your food and beverages. Such feedbacks become part and parcel of how your businesses grow, with the right questions asked and the right answers delivered.
5. Provide self-help options
As per stats report of eConsultancy, more than 50% of customers prefer to find answers to their problems by themselves. Most of the time customers ask basic questions and to get the answer of that question they need to call or email the customer support team, and this leads to frustration among customers when you don’t reach the right agent.
One of the easiest ways is creating FAQ section on your website and include all the answers to the questions that are commonly asked by the customers. You can identify these common questions by reviewing customer’s calls or email logs or can discuss with customer service team or sales team. With this proactive approach, customers can easily get all the answers and this will save time and reduce the number of support tickets you receive.
6. To get an edge over your competitors
Since it has been established that not many companies use customer services as their go-to medium to make their customers happy, it might give your business a dramatic edge, if you start using this tactic.
Rules of the competition state that if you wish to win, first do what everyone is already doing, then move to something that not many can do, and then start working on something that would give you an edge over the others. Take this as a bible for doing business.
This is probably the most obvious reasons, which should make you set up a customer service for your clients right away. Do you remember the famous Samsung smartphone case that depicted an exceptionally caring, yet smart outlook towards customer service!
One of the customers of the company reached out to the company stating that being a loyal customer to the Korean giant, he drew an amazing portrait on one of his Samsung devices, and sent it out to the firm. In response, the company gifted the man a brand new Samsung Galaxy Smartphone.
And thus, the loyalty factor increased immediately a tad higher. Now, although Samsung may not be a SaaS company directly, the point here being: If you’re using customer service to tackle your consumers’ problems, there are more chances that you gain their trust and develop a stronger brand image.
Wrap up
Proactive customer service will give your company the opportunity to develop and maintain a personal relationship with your customers. Not only this will create a bond but also will build a strong, loyal customer base that trusts your company. The strategy of proactive customer service will allow you to exceed customer expectations by resolving their issues before they know they have them what more could a customer ask for?
