Use Cases for Proactive Outbound Contact

Your customers have high expectations of you. According to Salesforce, 65% of customer expect companies to adapt to their changing needs and preferences and 80% say the experience you provide is as important as your products or services. So, how do we keep up with these lofty expectations?

In a previous article, I covered the importance of being proactive to your customer experience. In today's article we'll dig into a few tactical use cases where you can leverage a proactive, outbound approach to provide an exceptional experience and understand a customer's needs, sometimes even before they do.

Appointment Reminders

If you aren't doing them already, appointment reminders are the low-hanging fruit of proactive contact. Either by sending a text message or placing a call and leaving a voicemail, appointment reminders are an easy first step to taking on outbound contacts. Beyond developing the organizational muscle around outbound, there are up to 60% reductions in no-shows, getting more people in the door and maintaining organizational efficiency.

Proactive Service Calls

A further step beyond just reminding people about existing appointments is to proactively reach out to book new ones. The formula for who you contact and when could be very simple, or extremely complex. On the simple side, a car mechanic could remind frequent customers about needing an oil change every three months and ask if they'd like to come in during a time that the calendar is empty. On the more complicated side, an industrial machine manufacturer could tie sensor data to a machine learning algorithm that detects when parts are about to fail. When they see that signal, they can reach out before the equipment is fully out of commission. Not only does this type of proactive outreach keep your people busy, but it shows your customer base that you care about what is important to them, building trust and deepening your working relationship.

Subscription Renewals

If you offer a product or service that has subscription, sending notifications on upcoming renewals, particularly to customers that need to manually renew, is key to retaining your base. This is not just an opportunity to solicit another payment, but a chance to help your customer reflect on the value your offering is providing them and remind them of why they signed up in the first place. Additionally, if you notice a change in their usage pattern, this could be the time where you help your customer right-size their subscription. If they've ramped up usage, maybe a higher tier plan now makes sense for them. Maybe they've wound down usage and instead of letting the customer feel like they aren't getting the value they anticipated, you help them reduce their plan and prevent them from churning.

Feature Releases

When you make a big change, or introduce an exciting new feature, you should let your customers know about it. Proactive education is key to driving feature adoption. Even beyond new features, making sure your customers are informed about the scope of the services they purchased from you is paramount to stickiness. The more you are part of their process, the more value they derive from your offering. This virtuous cycle of creating value and retaining customers starts with making sure they are educated, and proactively reaching out to deliver that insight and education is an easy first step.

Soliciting Feedback

Finally, after your customer has had a service interaction or has had your product for a little while, its vital to understand their experience. Are they satisfied, do they have any concerns, are they still using your product as much as they thought they would? Getting direct feedback from your customers will help you improve your product and operations, but unless someone has made a major mistake, you are unlikely to receive feedback unless you ask for it.

Today, we saw five ways you can approach proactive outbound contact. Regardless of the channel and technology that powers the contact, the act of reaching out to your customer to be a good partner is of vital importance. With expectations constantly being reset higher, proactive, outbound contact is a key ingredient in delivering exceptional customer experiences.