In today’s world, it’s no longer good enough to only provide reactive customer service. You can’t just wait for a problem to arise and then react to it when a customer complains. Many people look at this as the contact center’s main job—dealing with problems as they arise. But that’s not a good strategy for retaining customers and bringing in new revenue. What it takes now is proactive customer service.

When a customer orders a product now, most companies send them an email with its tracking number as soon as it ships. That’s proactive. The customer has the number and can track the package without needing to call your contact center when it’s a day or two late. Instead, they see that it took a little longer in Ohio, and it should be there on Friday.

Have you noticed that when you fly anywhere now, the airline offers to text or email you updates? That’s proactive. Even if they’re texting you to tell you the plane will be delayed, it’s still tipping off the customer ahead of time.

• What you need to do first is to identify what the most common questions and problems that your customers call with. Whether that’s in the pre-purchase, purchasing, or post-purchase stages, you’ll probably be able to pick out certain issues that seem to come up all the time.

• Use new technology to address issues that have been going on for a while. You’ll have to collaborate and bring together your entire organization in order to develop an effective plan for proactive customer service. Experiment and use new software and technology to your advantage

• Take it one step at a time. You might have trouble doing a complete overhaul of your customer service program. So aim for a few quick wins. Take those one or two most pressing issues that seem to eat up agents’ time, and introduce a new proactive solution for them. These test runs will allow you to learn and better understand what you need to do in the future. And when they work, they’ll generate organizational support for future proactive measures.

• The last step is to measure what you’ve done. Get some hard data on whether or not your initiative was worth it. Are call volumes about that issue down? Has anything changed measurably, and what kind of feedback are you hearing from customers? That last part is important. Using surveys or a quick email questionnaire, try to find out as much as you can about what customers think. And if your initiative didn’t work the way you planned? Then you have the necessary data to adjust and move forward.

At KOVA, we’re always looking for ways to help contact centers improve their efficiency and customer service. Our Impact 360 Customer Feedback can help you gather valuable feedback from customers at the end of their calls through IVR or email surveys. Contact us today to find out more about what software solutions from KOVA can do for your contact center.