Feature
The Gist
- Shift required. Proactive CX anticipates needs and optimizes journeys.
- Gains evident. Predictive service boosts loyalty and brand perception.
- Empowerment key. Data insights and journey mapping guide proactive efforts.
Customers today are accustomed to highly personalized, seamless brand experiences. Waiting until something goes wrong is no longer an option in customer experience (CX). That's why forward-thinking brands are shifting to a proactive CX approach centered on anticipating needs, deepening connections and optimizing journeys. Through the use of customer insights, brands can preempt pain points before they happen. Proactive CX reflects deeper empathy, accountability and transparency. This article explores best practices for making the leap from reactive to proactive CX, and looks at some brands that have made the transition.
What Is Proactive Customer Experience?
Proactive customer experience (CX) is about taking a predictive, preventative approach to serve customers instead of just reacting to problems as they arise. It emphasizes understanding customer needs ahead of time and addressing pain points before they ever happen. Examples of proactive customer experience include:
- Resolving problems before they occur.
- Providing customers with information about upcoming product renewals or features.
- Keeping customers informed about details that need to be updated (such as credit cards that are about to expire) or repaired.
- The elimination of pain points that sour the customer journey.
- Reducing costs for customers while maintaining ROI.
- Making it easier to do business with the brand.
To enable this, brands must continually listen to customers through surveys, social media monitoring and other feedback channels to identify emerging needs. Behavioral data and qualitative insights are analyzed to detect trends, preferences and expectations that may signify future opportunities. Journey mapping also uncovers pain points that could be improved throughout the entire end-to-end experience.
With these insights, brands can then take an anticipatory approach to develop new services, products and engagement channels tailored to predicted customer needs. Proactive outreach through preferred channels shares information and offers matched to customer interests before they even ask. Rather than waiting for complaints, input is proactively sought through collaboration with customers to generate ideas, develop solutions, and design new products and services together.
Other proactive CX strategies include developing analytics-driven predictive models and early warning systems to identify issues ahead of time. Employees are enabled to spot warning signs and address problems preemptively. Self-service and automation are optimized to answer customer questions before they even have to inquire.
The overarching goal is to demonstrate an understanding of customers so thoroughly that their needs and desires can be addressed before they even realize them. This enhances loyalty by taking CX from reactionary to visionary.
Related Article: Is Your Organization’s Digital Customer Experience Proactive or Reactive?
The Benefits of Proactive CX
A 2020 Gartner survey of over 6,000 customers revealed that only 13% of those polled report any type of proactive customer service. This is surprising considering that survey also shows that proactive customer service results in a full percentage point increase in the net promoter score, customer satisfaction score, customer effort score and value enhancement score.
Transitioning to proactive CX provides many gains for brands across metrics including satisfaction, loyalty, brand perception, efficiency and innovation. When needs are anticipated and issues averted, customers feel cared for and expectations are exceeded, cultivating positive brand affinity.
Customers also appreciate the increased convenience and reduced effort that is required when information and solutions are proactively delivered to them. A culture of innovation is created when predictive engagement shows that a brand is putting the customer first. With fewer complaints to reactively handle, agents can focus on more impactful work.
The deep customer insights that are required for proactive CX can provide the incentive for new products and services. Proactive CX facilitates improved resource planning, a deeper understanding of customers, and a mindset that is focused on continually optimizing the future experience.
Related Article: Has Your Brand Transitioned From Reactive to Proactive Customer Service?
How Is Proactive CX Accomplished?
Transitioning to proactive CX requires shifting from a reactive mindset and changing the daily practices within a business. A business that practices proactive CX encourages and supports a forward-thinking culture that is focused on anticipation rather than reaction. Proactive CX combines predictive analytics, consumer research and journey mapping.
The constant analysis of metrics and subjective feedback is critical for powering proactive CX. Brands must conduct research using surveys, interviews and focus groups that help to determine customers' emerging needs, perceived pain points and changing expectations. Looking at both sides of the equation such as highly engaged or at-risk segments often provides the most fruitful perspectives. Combined with behavioral data like purchase history, site analytics and service records, brands are able to create rich profiles of target personas, their preferences and anticipated next best steps.
These analytical insights are then used for journey-mapping initiatives that determine which steps to enhance. Journey maps visualize each phase of the journey (awareness, consideration, decision, retention and advocacy) from the customer's eyes, highlighting the obstacles and feelings that could be improved. Design thinking techniques also encourage empathy and creative problem-solving.
Derek Jacques, attorney and principal owner of The Mitten Law Firm, told CMSWire that most of the CX in the legal industry is reactive, with almost no post-service touchpoints with clients, so his firm decided to move forward on a handful of proactive measures to change the typical customer experience for legal clients — and his business saw many positive results.
"First, we instituted a more comprehensive content calendar, which addresses many of the FAQs that potential clients have about our services," said Jacques. "Because we handle many personal matters such as divorces, child custody, and bankruptcy, we found that some potential clients don't want to get on the phone with us right away for a consultation. Rather, they want to do their research and learn more about their specific concern."
The impact of switching to a proactive CX strategy has been that Jacques’ customers are highly satisfied and remain loyal to his law firm. “The results have actually been surprising, as the percentage of clients that use us for more than one of our services throughout their lives has improved by 36% since we began being more proactive,” said Jacques. “An example would be a client that has our firm handle their divorce case will also call us back for any subsequent child custody matters that may arise in the following years, such as getting parenting time changed or child support orders amended.”
Proactive CX is an iterative and experimental process. Brands must continually monitor performance, assess new data, have customers validate concepts and tweak approaches based on what works. The voice of the customer should determine the course. With testing and optimization, proactive CX delivers tangible results including higher NPS scores as well as lower churn rates.
Brands That Have Benefitted From Proactive CX
There are many brands that have effectively used proactive CX to improve their customers’ journeys, including:
- Amazon – Uses predictive analytics to make personalized recommendations and even ship products before customers order them based on purchase history and browsing data. Their anticipatory shipping enabled innovations that are used with its Prime service.
- Nordstrom – Empowers sales staff to proactively offer services like expedited delivery and personal shoppers for high-value customers based on individual needs.
- Netflix – Analyzes member habits to suggest new shows customers may like and make intelligent programming decisions. They also encouraged customers to change to unlimited plans before a price hike.
- Ritz Carlton – Grants all staff autonomy to expend up to $2000 per guest interaction to preemptively resolve any issues and enhance the customer experience.
The benefits of proactive CX are unrivaled when it is correctly implemented. Vikas Kaushik, CEO at TechAhead, a mobile app development and digital transformation company, told CMSWire that by switching to proactive CX, his business was able to foresee its clients' requirements and pain areas even before they stated them by using customer insights and implementing design thinking techniques. "We were able to create incredibly individualized, frictionless experiences thanks to this strategy, thus solidifying our reputation as a reliable partner for digital transformation," said Kaushik.
Kaushik reiterated that adopting a proactive CX approach had numerous advantages. “First and foremost, we improved our relationships with clients by getting to know them better. This gave the company a competitive edge in the technology sector by increasing client loyalty and increasing retention rates. Additionally, the number of support tickets and complaints significantly decreased as a result of anticipating pain spots and resolving them before their escalation. We observed increased operational effectiveness as well as a shortened customer assistance procedure as a result,” said Kaushik.
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In each case, the brands are able to use data, anticipatory innovation and human judgment to predict customer needs and make the first move to provide solutions. This builds lasting relationships through value-added proactivity.
Final Thoughts on Proactive CX
By continually listening to customers, mapping their journeys and using data-driven insights, customers' needs can be anticipated instead of just responded to. This anticipatory approach drives innovation and loyalty by providing unexpected value to customers. Future-focused brands that are proactively engaging customers will build deeper connections and stay ahead of the curve in delighting customers.
