Enable Proactive Customer Service Through Workforce Management Software

Whether you’re in individual in the workplace or a business, having proactive customer service is one of the most essential skills when it comes to your success.

For many businesses, the default approach to customer service is to respond to clients or events after a problem arises. This reactive method might satisfy the customer and solve the problem temporarily, but it won’t give them any evidence you’re going above and beyond in the delivery of your service. A much better strategy for a business looking to impress and retain or gain customers would be to solve problems before a customer had to call you. Better still if you can address the issues before the customer even becomes aware of them and flip your reactive customer service into proactive customer service.

Management teams will often admit they don’t know with any accuracy or detail what’s going on within the delivery of a contract. The only time they’ll know there’s a problem is when the client notifies them of one. If additional information on the problem and who’s at fault is required, the response is to dedicate people to finding, consolidating and presenting the information back to the management team. This takes time, money and resources — all invested at the wrong point in the contract service delivery.

In the absence of any accurate information in front of them at the right time, executives make important decisions based on either no data or unreliable data. In some cases, they don’t make any decisions at all. The result is a reaction, rather than a proactive management strategy.

Proactive customer service allows detection and reaction to client problems, enabling a service-providing business to reach out to their customers before they reach the pain point and become frustrated. Early detection of an issue is crucial. Dealing with an issue whilst it’s minor — before it escalates into a crisis — means that it can be mitigated and prevented from becoming worse or more costly to rectify.

By allowing service-providing organisations to swap their traditional reactive ways of working with more progressive, proactive ways of working, the information gathered by workforce management software gives organisations the means to retain and win more business. They’re armed with detailed, live information on each aspect, of each contract they hold. Organisations that invest in workforce management software give their management teams vital insight they require to make informed business decisions. It also gives management teams the foresight needed for beneficial proactive action.

The following four examples highlight the ways in which working to a proactive strategy will benefit the service provider and the customer, when compared to a reactive way of working:

1. Resolution

Proactive approach: Through workforce management data, a business can identify and resolve any difficulty or future issue that a customer might face and fix it straight away.

Reactive approach: An issue is only identified once it has occurred and impacted a customer’s business. Providing resolutions for such problems require more time, would cost more money and would ultimately be a slow process.

2. Business Impact

Proactive approach: If working to a proactive strategy, the business impact of any fault or potential gap in service delivery would be low, as you would have already taken care of any issues prior to them becoming a problem.

Reactive approach: Reacting to an issue once it has already become a problem means the business impact of the problem is high. Not only will it affect the customer’s business, but it will also have an impact on the work of the service provider.

3. Workload

Proactive approach: Proactively handling issues will reduce workload and impact that could affect the customer’s business.

Reactive approach: Reactively dealing with tasks arising from faults or issues will increase and unbalance the workload, disturbing the normal flow of activity within a business. This could have a negative knock-on effect to other contracts as a result.

4. Customer Satisfaction

Proactive approach: Acting prior to an issue builds customers’ confidence. Proactive customer service will allow a service provider to build customer loyalty through the provision of excellent customer experiences.

Reactive approach: Acting once the difficulty becomes a problem suggests to the client a lack of care and poor customer service. This lessens the client’s confidence in the service provider’s integrity and capabilities.

Looking after a client and managing their contract by reacting to disruptions or problems after they have arisen is not the most beneficial way to run a business.  Only by implementing a solution that gives real-time insights into workforce activity and service delivery can you improve your business’s efficiency, timelines, and risk management. Workforce management software is an investment into a more proactive way of working and gives decision makers and executives the visibility they need to manage an enterprise in real time and gain greater control over all parts of their business.