Businesses of all sizes are striving to provide proactive service but remain challenged to deliver it. Gartner found in its latest consumer survey that only 13% of customers are relishing it. This is a huge issue for brands with proactive service being now a primary driver of a great customer experience (CX).

Two challenges are hindering practitioners. First, they struggle to visualize what specific proactive service they can and should propose. Second, they fear that proactive service will require additional cycles from their teams already battling with a capacity gap further exacerbated by the Great Resignation.

The best way to identify proactive service opportunities is to look at the customer journey.

Before a customer service request, you should identify steps that can prevent inbound support inquiries in the first place. For connected products, it can be anticipating an issue using predictive analytics. It can also be looking at customers’ recurring needs and likely asks. For example, this can be accomplished through a formal onboarding process. During the interaction, you should provide proactive notifications on the status and resolution of inquiries and problems. After the interaction, you should collect feedback and leverage its insights to prevent churn, develop loyalty, and drive incremental sales.

Interaction initiation is the fourth—often overlooked—opportunity to offer proactive service. At the beginning of an inbound interaction, you can offer customers two options that will streamline their experience and reduce the load on your teams. The first consists in offering a callback as soon as the wait time elongates. Campaign-driven callback is a simple yet transformative solution to handle traffic surges and capacity gaps. The second consists in guiding customers to the best channel for resolving their problems. The multiplication of channels has left customers unsure about their best option, often trying multiple simultaneously. Forrester found that 95% of customers were using 3+ channels for the same issue. By taking proactive steps to guide customers, you can reduce the number of interactions and steer them to the most effective resolution workflow.

The beauty of these proactive service opportunities is that many steps can be automated using an omnichannel campaign manager. They will also reduce the volume and length of inbound inquiries and can be implemented incrementally. So, you no longer have any excuse for not ramping up your proactive service!