Traditionally customer service is reactive, but reactive customer service is both expensive and un-engaging. Meanwhile, proactive customer service offers cost savings and customer engagement opportunities. This white paper highlights the business case for offering proactive customer service, showcases some great examples of organisations already doing this, how they are benefiting and outlines a process for getting started and for developing ideas and initiatives for improvement.

1. How to transform your
customer experience
by making your
customer service
proactive
A Publication by Adrian Swinscoe | RARE Business
Caz Yetman and Danielle Sheerin | BrightCultures

2. Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1
The Business Case
Chapter 2
Finding Opportunities
Chapter 3
Implementing An Effective Strategy
Conclusion
About The Authors

3. Introduction
Traditionally, customer service is reactive. But, reactive customer service is
both expensive and un-engaging. Meanwhile, proactive customer service
offers cost saving and customer engagement opportunities.
Whilst proactive customer service is not a new concept, the majority of
companies are still only organised to deliver customer service reactively.
Firms need to look at what reactive customer service is actually costing
them, in terms of extra resources and costs and what they are, potentially,
losing out on.
This white paper highlights the business case for offering proactive customer
service, showcases some great examples of organisations already doing this,
how they are benefiting and outlines a process for getting started and for
developing ideas and initiatives for improvement.
“Between 25% and 40% of all calls to
UK contact centres are either
unnecessary or avoidable.”

4. There are four different types of
(overlapping) proactive customer service:
1.Anticipatory e.g. understanding
common customer issues and providing
solutions before the customer asks.
2. Relevant e.g. service that understands
the customer context and provides support
relevant to that i.e. customer location data
etc.
3. Self-serve e.g. letting customers find
their own solution through things like FAQs
etc.
4. Preventative e.g. letting customers
know that there may be a problem so they can
avoid it or be prepared i.e. text notifications
etc.

5. Chapter One
The Business Case
Here are a few reasons that explain the potential opportunity of proactive
customer service (the business case):
1. There is a clear opportunity to reduce costs.
Research by Sabio and the Customer Contact Association found that
between 25% and 40% of all calls to UK contact centres are either
unnecessary or avoidable. According to the research, the most common
causes of these calls included: customers chasing information about
deliveries or updates on what was due to happen next in the purchase cycle;
customers calling to clarify issues regarding pricing or terms and conditions;
and customers having to re-call the contact centre again as the contact
centre had failed to address their problem first time around. This research
is supported by work conducted by the Corporate Executive Board who
found that that 57% of all inbound calls to a contact centre could largely be
attributed to a customer not being able to find what they were looking for
on a company’s website.
2. Customers want to be contacted proactively.
A survey by inContact found that 87% of customers surveyed said they
wanted to be contacted proactively by a company, when it came to
customer service issues. Also, nearly three quarters (73%) of those who had
been contacted proactively and had a positive experience said that it led to
a positive change in their perception of the business that contacted them.
3. A proactive customer service strategy delivers cost savings and boosts
retention.
Further research by Enkata put all of this together and showed that
an effective proactive customer service strategy can:
1. Reduce inbound customer service call volumes by between 20-30%
over a 12 month period;
2. Lower call centre operating costs by as much as 25%; and
3. Has a positive effect on customer retention, boosting it by 3–5%.

6. 4. Digital technology means it’s easier than ever to offer proactive
customer service.
Digital technology has increased customer expectations. But it also
means that it’s now easier than ever to service the needs of large volumes
of customers at once. Organisations can now capitalise on digital technology
by creating content that anticipates the needs of a wide audience via self-
serve content (e.g. video support etc.). Ultimately, organisations can add
value-add services around common customer pain-points that remove the
need to support entirely. This means that customers who will require 1-on-1
support will only be those with more complex issues and that higher
volumes of customers can be served at lower costs. In addition, studies
show that social agents are able to handle four to eight times more issues
per hour than those that operate purely on the phone (Gartner, 2012) and
each interaction costs less than $1 as compared to $6 per call for phone and
$2.50 to $5 per email (NM Incite 2012).

7. These data points help outline the opportunity that is in front of many
companies.
However, leading, innovative and creative companies already understand
these insights and they are using them to steal a march on their competitors,
deliver cost savings, higher revenues, better customer metrics and an overall
better customer experience.
“57% of all inbound calls to a
contact centre could largely be
attributed to a customer not being
able to find what they were looking
for on a company’s website”

8. Chapter Two
Finding Opportunities
An analysis of leading companies show that they realise that relying just on
reactive customer service is no longer sufficient in order to compete,
differentiate and drive their businesses forward. Increasingly they are now
implementing proactive customer service strategies which is allowing them
to lower costs, drive additional revenue, improve satisfaction and NPS
scores, increase customer engagement and, also, boost customer loyalty and
retention.
Identifying where opportunities to be proactive lie, Kate Leggett of
Forrester in a recent post on trends in customer service in 2015 suggested
that:
“In 2015, we expect organizations
to explore proactive engagement
……delivered at the right time in a
customer’s pre-purchase journey to
help answer customer questions. ”

9. However, the following firms demonstrate that value can be delivered not
just in the pre-purchase phase but across the whole customer life-cycle
(pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase):
1. Pre -Purchase: Proactive service can begin before a prospect is a
customer.
• Proactivity is allowing Budget to reduce call volume, costs and
drive revenue. US Consumer and commercial truck rental firm,
Budget Truck Rental, is using IntelliResponse’s intelligent virtual
agent web self-service tool to provide instant answers to
questions from prospective customers. Following
implementation of Intelliresponse’s technology, Budget was able
to achieve a 28% reduction in inbound call centre calls from
those prospective customers and $875,000 of cost savings and
online revenue gains in the first 7 months of operation.
• Similarly, using the same technology and approach, Copa
Airlines achieved a 40% reduction in call and chat volume
freeing up their live agents’ time to focus on helping customers
that have urgent inquiries and that require live agent support.
2. Purchase: Proactive service improves the customer experience of
existing customers.
• AT&T is utilising SundaySky’s SmartVideo technology to
proactively minimise ‘bill shock’, for their new and returning
customers. ‘Bill shock’ occurs when the customer is shocked
when they receive their first bill as they do not understand all
the different elements of the bill. This results in a significant
number of inbound calls. Utilising SundaySky’s technology, each
new and returning customer receives, along with their bill, a link
to a personalised video that uses their actual bill and their
specific data and explains all of the different elements of the
bill. Implementing this strategy has allowed AT&T to realise a
material reduction in inbound calls, a significant increase in the
uptake of value enhancing services, like paperless billing, and an
increase in their NPS scores.

10. 3. Post-Purchase: Proactive service maintains and improves the ongoing
relationship.
• Virgin Mobile is proactively communicating with it’s customers
to minimise appointment failure. Virgin Media in the UK has
around 2500 engineers providing free-of-charge servicing for
their broadband customers. However, through the operation of
their business, they know that on average 10% of all their service
appointments fail, largely because their customers forget about
the appointments. This has huge utilisation and cost implications
for Virgin Media. Therefore, Virgin Media utilises Contact
Engine’s technology to proactively communicate with their
customers via various channels (text, email, web etc) in the run
up to appointments to make sure that customers don’t forget
about the appointment. This is driving a dramatic reduction in
the 10% of failed appointments, saving Virgin Media millions of
pounds per year in utilisation and engineer costs and, at the
same time, is driving increased customer satisfaction and higher
NPS scores.
• Anglian Water, one of the UK’s largest water companies,
utilises Aspect’s proactive messaging technology to improve
operational efficiency. The firm proactively notifies 80% of their
customers whose phone numbers they have on file regarding
water outages relevant to their location. This has allowed them
to save hundreds of thousands of pounds in call centre costs
every year and has improved their overall customer experience,
which is supported by the positive feedback they receive.
These examples provide inspiration and food for thought of the scale of the
opportunity that proactive customer service can offer.

11. Chapter Three
Implementing an
effective proactive
customer service
strategy
Before any organisation can start to implement a proactive customer service
strategy, it must first explore what gets in the way and address the barriers.
One of the primary reasons for most businesses of not doing this already, is
that they are organised, run and measured in a way that works against the
sort of collaboration and cross-functional working that a proactive customer
service strategy would require.
According to a McKinsey report, academic research indicates that companies
with better collaborative management capabilities achieve superior
financial performance. However, the bigger and more complex a company
becomes, the more likely it is that silos will start to emerge, and this can
prevent organisations from tapping into the many sources of value created
by collaboration across businesses including improved customer experience.
In a heavily siloed organisation, people rarely have the autonomy to act on
the things they think can be improved, employees might not understand
how they can contribute or there might not be enough trust that someone is
not doing something in the best interest of the organisation.

12. Organisations that are trying to overcome these challenges are addressing
the three key areas of a highly collaborative organisation - autonomy,
transparency and trust. In order to do this, and gradually shape the
collaborative learning culture throughout the system, organisations are
developing leadership skills, using collaborative social platforms, hosting
collaborative workshops and creating communities of practice.
To overcome these barriers and push forward with the development and
implementation of this type of strategy, customer service and experience
leaders should adopt an agile approach and follow the following steps:
1. Investigate: Use data tools to identify the most frequently occurring
customer questions and problems across the customer life-cycle
Companies that have been successful in implementing a proactive
customer service strategy have focused quickly on addressing the mostly
common and costly problems that exist across the different Pre-Purchase,
Purchase and Post-Purchase stages.

13. 2. Design: Work collaboratively, leveraging technology, to develop
effective solutions to identified problems.
Given that customer problems exist across the different stages of the
customer life-cycle this will require a collaborative approach across
organisational functions to ensure the design and delivery of a successful
strategy. Successful proponents of proactive customer service understand
this and ensure that the design of new customer interactions involve all of
the right people.
3. Plan and Pilot: Aim for quick wins to generate momentum and
organisational support.
Most organisations are still reactive when it comes to the delivery of
their customer service. Therefore, in introducing a new proactive approach
it is essential that any strategy focuses initially on piloting one or two new
solutions to commonly occurring and costly customer issues. These pilots
allow the business to test hypotheses, learn, quickly deliver benefits to the
business and its customers and help build support for future initiatives. In
the UK banking sector, first direct, is a leading proponent of this approach
and uses it’s ‘Lab’ initiative as a vehicle that allows it to test new service
ideas and concepts.
4. Measure and Adjust: Pilots will allow the business to learn and adjust
for maximum return.
Starting the implementation of a proactive customer service strategy
with pilot projects will ensure that organisations minimise risk and resource
requirements and take a learning and agile approach thus allowing them to
learn and adjust new initiatives so that they deliver the maximum returns.
Like first direct, Brazilian telecom company, Vivo, benefited from taking a
pilot-based approach when launching a new mobile bill payment service and
through its pilot gained valuable insights on obstacles to adoption and
scaling their new service.

14. 5. Scale: Once proven pilots should be released, adapted and
implemented across the organisation.
Taking an agile and collaborative approach to the development and
implementation of a proactive customer service strategy will allow the
organisation to minimise risk and start on the road to achieving the
significant benefits associated with proactive customer service.
Moreover, the aim of these five steps is to build trust and engagement both
internally (across functions and departments) and externally (with
customers) so that both the organisation and the customer benefits, for
example:

15. Conclusion
To take advantage of the benefits of implementing a proactive customer
service strategy using the four steps above, organisations must first become
more collaborative.
If they do this, they can start to reduce costs, meet customer expectations,
boost retention and harness the opportunities that are in front of them.
There are plenty of opportunities to service customers proactively at every
stage of the customer journey. More companies need to take up the
challenge to become more proactive, more valuable, more collaborative and
more innovative.

16. About The Authors
Adrian Swinscoe | RARE Business
We are a consultancy focusing on the design and delivery of break-through
and exceptional customer service and customer experience.
Led by Adrian Swinscoe, a noted consultant, speaker, thought leader and Forbes
contributor in this space, our work and pragmatic approach always results in
cost savings, higher revenues, better service and an improved overall customer
and employee experience. We work with large, international and ambitious
businesses solve their customer related growth, service or experience problems.
www.rarebusiness.co.uk | hello@rarebusiness.co.uk | @adrianswinscoe
Caz Yetman & Danielle Sheerin | BrightCultures
We are the most experienced consultants in creating social customer care for
regulated companies.
Our unique blend of practical processes and people-thinking means we can help
you integrate social media into every aspect of your social customer care
offering, whether you’re just starting up, or wanting to develop a 360°
customer care centre.
We work with international brands like O2 and organisations that are heavily
regulated like Barclays, DirectLine and RBS.
www.brightcultures.com | info@brightcultures.com | @brightcultures