A big part of your business model is providing amazing customer service. But what many businesses don’t grasp is the concept of proactive customer service and using that to solve a problem before it ever happens. Not only will you end up spending less time fixing problems, you will also end up having much more satisfied customers who are more willing to refer you to their friends. Here are some ways you can provide more proactive customer service to your customers.
Easier communications
One way to be proactive with your customers is to give them easier access to contacting you. Customers get extremely frustrated when the only way they can get help is to call your business and then they come to find out you have extremely limited customer service hours. Rather than wait on hold or trying again at a less convenient time for them, they will simply leave your company and go to someone else. Allow them to send emails, text you, call you, contact you through social media. The more channels you have readily available and the more hours you can be around to answer, the happier customers will be.
Add more technology
Technology improvements are necessary to a more proactive customer service staff. They will be able to more easily answer questions and get back to the customer faster if they have the right tools available to them to get the answers they are looking for, according to Forbes. It is also a good idea if you can use AI Chatbot to answer repetitive customer questions, so you don’t waste time. Not only will your staff be able to get to more customers and help more people, but your customers will be much happier about it as well. Chatbot will answer their questions more clearly than phone calls and will answer much faster than a real person since the program can identify the question and answer it immediately.
Stay on top of it
Many times, customer service agents will need a couple of days to resolve a customer complaint. In these situations, it is very frustrating for the customer to have to call back and ask for an update. Even if the representative doesn’t have onen yet and feels like it is waste to inform the customer without any new information, the truth is that the customer would much rather know they haven’t been forgotten even if it is with no news than to hear nothing and wonder if anyone even cares about their issue. Follow-up communication is extremely important and should not be forgotten.
Source: Forbes
