How to Futureproof Your Contact Center Strategy

It’s a new year, and as you’d expect, businesses all over the globe are getting busy planning the goals needed for a profitable year. One of these diligent plans is taking their customers’ experience numbers to a new level. But if there’s one thing we’ve seen: big plans don’t always translate to big results.

We understand how fast-paced the customer space can be, but keeping up can sometimes be done by slowing down a bit. Sounds counter-intuitive, right? Slowing down to listen and understand what your customers need will ensure you stay relevant. A simple, yet effective approach to doing this is evolving from a reactive to a proactive customer mindset.

What is a proactive customer mindset?

Reactive-proactive is the same concept as “good-great,” and the transition comes down to the difference in effort and initiative, i.e., “going the extra mile.”

Picture this: It’s the final minute, and you’re the last man in defense against an oncoming play of attack in a sports game. Usually, being a good player is your ability to defend against forward play, and everyone knows you’re good. But this time, instead of waiting to react to the play, you analyze your opponents' movements and, with precision, intercept their play and save your team from a loss. To the audience, that action can only be pulled off by being great.

This is the same with going from reactive to proactive with customers. Waiting to respond and resolve customer issues and requests as they arise is good; it’s expected. However, going the extra mile to predict your customer behaviors and taking actionable steps to address issues before they arise is what makes your business great.

How to become a proactive contact center

With the constant shifts in industry and business, here are key components for futureproofing your customer business strategy for this year and beyond:

• Proactive customer feedback and engagement: It’s important to develop the CX habit of reaching out to customers to understand their experience with products and services. This provides raw data on how to build tailored plans for customer engagement that will improve their experience and drive customer loyalty.
• Seamless omnichannel experience: Having different ways for customers to interact with your business is good, but providing a multichannel experience only encourages a reactive customer mindset.To be truly proactive, you need to integrate all channels seamlessly to provide a unified experience for customers. This will build a true customer-centric mindset and foster customer satisfaction.
• Innovative customer metrics and analytics: Another key component to implement is advanced metrics to predict and measure proactive campaigns. In addition to KPI metrics like CSAT and NPS, studying other experience-based metrics such as Customer Sentiment, Referral and Retention rates, as well as the CES (Customer Effort Score) will provide a deeper understanding of growing customer trends and key insights for business growth.
• Scalable systems and technology: Customer-focused systems and technology exist to ensure the other components are efficient across the business. Having a great self-service feature for customers will encourage more engagement and feedback on your service offering. Employing relevant technology will equip your contact center with the tools and training to effectively support customers.

An aligned business strategy is important to transition from reactive to proactive operations in your contact center. However, before implementing these components, it’s important to adopt the mindset within your team. People will always be the greatest resource of any business, and getting everyone on board and in a proactive customer flow takes care of half the effort needed to futureproof your operations in an ever-growing business landscape.