Traditionally, customer support relied on a reactive approach to answering a client’s questions. However, the bar has been raised with regard to the support experience people expect from companies. It’s no longer good enough to address issues after they occur. You need to employ proactive techniques so client issues can be avoided altogether. This is especially important in a B2B partnership where one business relies on another business’s product to function on a daily basis.
Proactive support requires the collection and monitoring of specific metrics in order to determine how and when to reach out to a client. Utilizing software for B2B customer service can aid in the gathering of these metrics, but how exactly are they going to help you? Keep reading to learn why you can’t afford to ignore proactive performance monitoring.
Continuous Improvement Insights
Analyzing data related to client issues along with your support process will allow you to confront issues before they occur. For example, let’s say you notice that each time your development team pushes a product update, you get an influx of support questions concerning a specific area of the product’s functionality. You can then take steps to provide proactive support in order to help clients better adapt to the update. This could involve sending links to knowledge base articles concerning the change. In addition, examining metrics can help you make further improvements to your product so common issues stop occurring with each update.
Measurable Customer Outcomes
Looking at data surrounding your support operation can provide invaluable feedback concerning issue resolution. This data includes what support channel is most effective, what issues are most common, and what your average resolution time is. All these metrics can help you drive change in the right direction to ensure optimal customer outcomes each time an issue arises. You may find you need to implement tools such as customizable customer support software in order to take advantage of tools such as chatbots or a self-service portal. These will provide more ways for your clients to get the answers they need when they need them. They’ll also allow your agents to easily meet your customers halfway by providing proactive support.
Drive Dynamic Business Change
There’s a good chance your support operation isn’t as effective as it seems on the surface. That’s why visual data reports are imperative assets for any business that wants to drive change. By looking at reports on a regular basis, you can determine where bottlenecks are occurring and refine your process to clear up the problem. You may even find you need to completely restructure your support team. Metrics can also help you pinpoint when clients start having issues within a service level agreement. Discovering problems like these can promote huge changes to a product and business strategy.
Make Proactive Monitoring a Requirement
Don’t let a chance to improve your clients’ support experience pass you by. Use software for B2B customer service to gather data that will help provide proactive support and make crucial changes to your business model.
PhaseWare can help you refine your operation by implementing customizable customer support software tools. Contact us today to learn more.