Your B2B organization must stay up-to-date on customer support trends if you want to remain competitive in the coming years. This means rethinking the way you connect with your client base. Traditionally, customer service involved reacting to client issues and requests when they came in. Today, you need to go further by providing proactive support. This involves reaching out to your customers before an issue occurs or as a way of delivering useful information.
The good news is there are now a number of ways a support team can connect with clients. Tools like software for B2B customer service provide a wide range of features that allow for proactive service. More specifically, messaging capability allows your reps to easily communicate with your client base. This type of proactive support is important when trying to achieve customer service personalization.
Understanding Proactive Messaging
The process of proactive messaging involves customer outreach prior to them contacting your support team for help. This is done with the aid messaging tools and a few different methodologies. Trigger-based messaging is a customer support automation feature that involves a message being sent to a client when certain conditions are or aren’t met. On the other hand, broadcasted proactive messaging involves delivering important information to a number of clients at once. Both of these approaches can be used to provide a more personalized form of communication to your customers.
Personalization Through Trigger-Based Messaging
Using trigger-based messaging through your configurable customer support software allows you to send a direct message to a client based on their interaction with your product. It could also be based on their use or lack of use of your self-service portal. The great thing about this type of messaging is you get to set the parameters. For example, an automated trigger can be set to send a specific client a message if they haven’t used a certain feature of your product. They’ll then receive information designed to educate them about this feature. This is also great for new clients who don’t seem to be using your product to its full potential.
Educating and Supporting Clients with Broadcast Proactive Messaging
You can also opt to send a group of clients a message highlighting important news pertaining to your products and services. Although these messages aren’t as personalized as trigger-based messages, they still target clients that will find this content useful. Types of information perfect for broadcast-based messaging include product changes, event announcements, or newsletters. Delivering this type of information proactively lets your clients know you have their needs in mind. Doing so helps them realize they’re a priority to your organization, which is great for client retention. This customer support automation helps build trust and also makes things easier on your internal team.
Make Proactive Messaging Part of Your Support Process
If your clients feel like they’re just a number, there’s a good chance they won’t stay with you on a long-term basis. Avoid this by implementing proactive messaging tools into your customer support process.
PhaseWare can help by providing software for B2B customer service that will put the right tools in your rep’s hands. Contact us today to learn more.