Enhancing Customer Experience Through Proactive Support in Web Hosting
What is proactive customer service?
Proactive customer service, also called proactive support, involves making the first move to help your customers before they feel they need to contact you for help. This can include introducing new products or services they may like, making errors and glitches known as they occur, or simply going out of your way to improve a customer’s experience.
In the fast-paced world of web hosting, providing exceptional customer experience is paramount. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is through proactive support. Unlike reactive support, which responds to customer issues as they arise, proactive support anticipates problems before they happen, thereby enhancing overall customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Proactive vs. Reactive Service
Proactive and reactive customer service are differentiated by who makes the first move. Proactive service means the company initiates contact with the customer, while reactive service means the customer is the first to reach out. Waiting for a customer to notify you of a problem is like waiting for your houseplants to start wilting before you water them—the damage is done. The customer is likely already frustrated with your brand, even if you have a solution. At that point, the problem may be complex and time-consuming for your team to resolve.
You’re anticipating issues before they occur, which saves the customer time and effort. For example, if there’s going to be an outage with your service, a proactive approach is informing the customer immediately via email or text rather than waiting for the customer to contact you when they notice the outage (reactive approach).
When customers voice concerns, suggestions, or questions, customer care teams or agents usually respond by offering support, guidance, or data. Providing pertinent information or resources ahead of time, visiting clients on a regular basis, or taking preventative action to avert typical issues are examples of proactive service.
Step Guide to Implementing Proactive Customer Service
1. Send out surveys.
Consumer feedback is essential to improving your proactive customer service. One of the biggest mistakes that companies make is assuming that they know what their customers want and need, and it’s nearly impossible to do this from an internal perspective. As a result, the best way to understand your customers is simply asking them how they feel.
2. Create a knowledge base.
Knowledge bases contain information about a company, its products and services, and other related topics. It can contain articles, FAQs, and video tutorials that customers can use to troubleshoot issues independently without needing to or before resorting to making a call to your support teams. This is a form of proactive support because you’re anticipating possible problems and giving customers access to the information they’ll need to resolve their issues before they even arise.
3. Introduce a “Products You May Like” feature.
A “Products You May Like,” or a recommendation feature, is a form of proactive customer service, as you’re setting customers up for success by making recommendations that will supplement or enhance their experience. Instead of having to search for new products, you’re already letting them know what they should consider buying. You can make these recommendations based on individual buyer behavior or use algorithms to understand how similar customers have made previous purchases.
4. Start an email newsletter.
There are other ways to stay in contact with your customers beyond recommending products and services. Emails are a great way to do so, as you’ll keep customers connected to your company and provide them with valuable information. Your email newsletter can include blog posts, industry news, new product announcements, events, and more. No matter what you include, you should tailor content to your business’s offerings.
5. Automate scheduling processes.
Part of providing proactive support is reducing customer effort, and one way to do this is by offering automatic or SMS scheduling options. For example, if one of your products requires routine maintenance, place customers on an automatic schedule so they don’t have to make appointments manually. Or, if a customer loves a product, you could offer automatic payment plans so they can continue to use their products without having to remember to re-subscribe every month.
6. Monitoring your social media.
Much like how gossip does, company scandals can spread around social media channels and quickly make your shortcomings publicly visible. If you aren’t monitoring what customers say about you on social media, you’re missing out on valuable opportunities to better understand your customers. Given this, it’s always best to pay attention to your various social channels and track what people say about your company.
1. Send out surveys
Consumer feedback is essential to improving your proactive customer service. One of the biggest mistakes that companies make is assuming that they know what their customers want and need, and it’s nearly impossible to do this from an internal perspective. As a result, the best way to understand your customers is simply asking them how they feel.
2. Create a knowledge base.
Knowledge bases contain information about a company, its products and services, and other related topics. It can contain articles, FAQs, and video tutorials that customers can use to troubleshoot issues independently without needing to or before resorting to making a call to your support teams. This is a form of proactive support because you’re anticipating possible problems and giving customers access to the information they’ll need to resolve their issues before they even arise.
3. Introduce a “Products You May Like” feature.
A “Products You May Like,” or a recommendation feature, is a form of proactive customer service, as you’re setting customers up for success by making recommendations that will supplement or enhance their experience. Instead of having to search for new products, you’re already letting them know what they should consider buying. You can make these recommendations based on individual buyer behavior or use algorithms to understand how similar customers have made previous purchases.
4. Start an email newsletter.
There are other ways to stay in contact with your customers beyond recommending products and services. Emails are a great way to do so, as you’ll keep customers connected to your company and provide them with valuable information. Your email newsletter can include blog posts, industry news, new product announcements, events, and more. No matter what you include, you should tailor content to your business’s offerings.
5. Automate scheduling processes.
Part of providing proactive support is reducing customer effort, and one way to do this is by offering automatic or SMS scheduling options. For example, if one of your products requires routine maintenance, place customers on an automatic schedule so they don’t have to make appointments manually. Or, if a customer loves a product, you could offer automatic payment plans so they can continue to use their products without having to remember to re-subscribe every month.
6. Monitoring your social media.
Much like how gossip does, company scandals can spread around social media channels and quickly make your shortcomings publicly visible. If you aren’t monitoring what customers say about you on social media, you’re missing out on valuable opportunities to better understand your customers. Given this, it’s always best to pay attention to your various social channels and track what people say about your company.
1. Send out surveys
Consumer feedback is essential to improving your proactive customer service. One of the biggest mistakes that companies make is assuming that they know what their customers want and need, and it’s nearly impossible to do this from an internal perspective. As a result, the best way to understand your customers is simply asking them how they feel.
2. Create a knowledge base.
Knowledge bases contain information about a company, its products and services, and other related topics. It can contain articles, FAQs, and video tutorials that customers can use to troubleshoot issues independently without needing to or before resorting to making a call to your support teams. This is a form of proactive support because you’re anticipating possible problems and giving customers access to the information they’ll need to resolve their issues before they even arise.
3. Introduce a “Products You May Like” feature.
A “Products You May Like,” or a recommendation feature, is a form of proactive customer service, as you’re setting customers up for success by making recommendations that will supplement or enhance their experience. Instead of having to search for new products, you’re already letting them know what they should consider buying. You can make these recommendations based on individual buyer behavior or use algorithms to understand how similar customers have made previous purchases.
4. Start an email newsletter.
There are other ways to stay in contact with your customers beyond recommending products and services. Emails are a great way to do so, as you’ll keep customers connected to your company and provide them with valuable information. Your email newsletter can include blog posts, industry news, new product announcements, events, and more. No matter what you include, you should tailor content to your business’s offerings.
5. Automate scheduling processes.
Part of providing proactive support is reducing customer effort, and one way to do this is by offering automatic or SMS scheduling options. For example, if one of your products requires routine maintenance, place customers on an automatic schedule so they don’t have to make appointments manually. Or, if a customer loves a product, you could offer automatic payment plans so they can continue to use their products without having to remember to re-subscribe every month.
6. Monitoring your social media.
Much like how gossip does, company scandals can spread around social media channels and quickly make your shortcomings publicly visible. If you aren’t monitoring what customers say about you on social media, you’re missing out on valuable opportunities to better understand your customers. Given this, it’s always best to pay attention to your various social channels and track what people say about your company.
1. Send out surveys
Consumer feedback is essential to improving your proactive customer service. One of the biggest mistakes that companies make is assuming that they know what their customers want and need, and it’s nearly impossible to do this from an internal perspective. As a result, the best way to understand your customers is simply asking them how they feel.
2. Create a knowledge base.
Knowledge bases contain information about a company, its products and services, and other related topics. It can contain articles, FAQs, and video tutorials that customers can use to troubleshoot issues independently without needing to or before resorting to making a call to your support teams. This is a form of proactive support because you’re anticipating possible problems and giving customers access to the information they’ll need to resolve their issues before they even arise.
3. Introduce a “Products You May Like” feature.
A “Products You May Like,” or a recommendation feature, is a form of proactive customer service, as you’re setting customers up for success by making recommendations that will supplement or enhance their experience. Instead of having to search for new products, you’re already letting them know what they should consider buying. You can make these recommendations based on individual buyer behavior or use algorithms to understand how similar customers have made previous purchases.
4. Start an email newsletter.
There are other ways to stay in contact with your customers beyond recommending products and services. Emails are a great way to do so, as you’ll keep customers connected to your company and provide them with valuable information. Your email newsletter can include blog posts, industry news, new product announcements, events, and more. No matter what you include, you should tailor content to your business’s offerings.
5. Automate scheduling processes.
Part of providing proactive support is reducing customer effort, and one way to do this is by offering automatic or SMS scheduling options. For example, if one of your products requires routine maintenance, place customers on an automatic schedule so they don’t have to make appointments manually. Or, if a customer loves a product, you could offer automatic payment plans so they can continue to use their products without having to remember to re-subscribe every month.
6. Monitoring your social media.
Much like how gossip does, company scandals can spread around social media channels and quickly make your shortcomings publicly visible. If you aren’t monitoring what customers say about you on social media, you’re missing out on valuable opportunities to better understand your customers. Given this, it’s always best to pay attention to your various social channels and track what people say about your company.