What is proactive customer service? Examples + strategies

Trust in companies is at an all-time low. With the rise of data breaches, relentless spam, and ongoing data privacy concerns, customers have become increasingly wary of how businesses handle their personal information. In an era where negative experiences can quickly go viral, companies must prioritise building trust and exceeding customer expectations.

To build customer trust, companies must seek ways to be proactive—not just reactive—with customer support. Proactive customer service is critical to business success.

In this guide, we'll define proactive customer service and explore its many benefits, from increased customer loyalty to reduced support costs. We'll also dive into practical strategies and real-world examples to show you how to implement proactive support in your business, ultimately helping you build trust and foster long-lasting customer relationships.

More in this guide:

• What is proactive customer service?
• Proactive vs. reactive service: Comparison
• Why should you provide proactive customer support?
• The benefits of proactive customer service
• 9 ways to deliver proactive customer service
• Examples of proactive customer care
• Frequently asked questions
• Implement proactive customer care today

Proactive vs. reactive service: Comparison

Proactive and reactive customer service are differentiated by who makes the first move. Proactive service means the company initiates contact with the customer, while reactive service means the customer is the first to reach out.

Waiting for a customer to notify you of a problem is like waiting for your houseplants to start wilting before you water them—the damage is done. The customer is likely already frustrated with your brand, even if you have a solution. At that point, the problem may be complex and time-consuming for your team to resolve.

With proactive customer service, you anticipate issues before they occur, saving the customer time and effort. For example, if there’s going to be an outage with your service, a proactive approach is informing the customer immediately via email or text rather than waiting for the customer to contact you when they notice the outage (reactive approach).

Even though proactive customer service has advantages, a business can’t anticipate every single customer need. The best strategy is to combine the two: Identify the areas where proactive customer service can help and implement reactive customer service as support.

Why should you provide proactive customer support?

The importance of being proactive in customer service cannot be overstated. It's a vital strategy for companies seeking to create exceptional customer experiences that drive loyalty and growth.

Forward-thinking businesses recognise the value of proactive customer care. According to our Customer Experience Trends Report 2024, 70 percent of organisations actively invest in technologies and tools that automatically capture and analyse intent signals.

Understanding and anticipating customer intent can help you demonstrate that your business is customer-centric and dedicated to delivering a seamless experience. When customers feel valued and understood, they are more likely to become loyal advocates for your brand.

The benefits of proactive customer service

Here are a few ways that proactive support can benefit your company.

Stronger customer loyalty and retention

Customer retention is closely linked to higher customer satisfaction levels. When customers feel valued, understood, and supported, they are more likely to remain loyal to a brand. Proactive customer service plays a vital role in fostering this loyalty by anticipating needs and addressing potential issues before they escalate.

For instance, AI agents—the next generation of AI-powered bots—can proactively notify customers about sales on their favourite products, boosting satisfaction and increasing lifetime value.

Reduced support costs

Proactive support can also help deflect support tickets. When common customer questions are resolved proactively, your team has more time to focus on the most pressing, complex, and high-priority support enquiries. As a result, agents will have more time and headspace to help customers solve their problems in a truly personal way.

Your agents will likely be more focused and engaged, too—fewer tickets means less stress. This will boost employee satisfaction and happiness, positively impacting how they show up at work and serve customers.

Increased efficiency

Proactive customer service can streamline operations and make your team more efficient. By anticipating customer needs and addressing potential issues before they escalate, you can reduce the volume of incoming enquiries and free up your agents to focus on complex or unique problems.

This targeted approach saves time and allows for more personalised interactions, leading to better problem resolution and happier customers. Additionally, proactive self-service options like chatbots and knowledge bases can deflect common questions, further optimising your team's workload and ensuring faster response times for everyone.

Positive brand reputation

When you consistently demonstrate a commitment to exceeding customer expectations, you create a positive brand image that resonates with consumers. This can attract new customers, strengthen relationships with existing ones, and ultimately lead to increased sales and market share. A strong reputation for proactive support can serve as a differentiator in a crowded marketplace, setting you apart from competitors who rely solely on reactive measures.

9 ways to deliver proactive customer service

While shifting from reactive to proactive customer care might seem daunting, it’s an essential move for companies that want to deliver superior experiences and gain a competitive advantage. Here’s how to incorporate proactive support into your customer service plan:

1. Build QA processes

Quality assurance (QA) processes are crucial in maintaining high standards for customer service, pinpointing areas for improvement before they escalate. Regular customer service QA helps you consistently assess agent performance and monitor customer sentiment, so you can get ahead of customer churn. With solutions like Zendesk QA, implementing and managing these processes becomes effortless—allowing you to harness AI to automatically review conversations and maintain top-tier service quality.

2. Leverage AI agents

Generative AI has absolutely transformed customer service, offering new ways to meet customer needs no matter where they are in their journey. Zendesk AI agents can handle various tasks, from answering frequently asked questions to guiding customers through troubleshooting processes.

AI agents can truly shine in providing proactive service by:

• Automatically verifying customers: By recognising a customer's email address, AI agents can tailor support experiences and provide accurate information more quickly, reducing frustration and improving overall efficiency.
• Detecting sentiment: Through sentiment analysis, AI agents can identify customers experiencing frustration or urgency. This allows you to prioritise their requests, escalate them to human agents if needed, and ensure timely resolution.
• Adapting to ongoing issues: When service outages or widespread problems occur, AI agents can dynamically adjust their responses to proactively address the issue to provide customers with updates and solutions, reduce the burden on human agents, and prevent escalations.

Leveraging the power of AI can help businesses anticipate customer needs, address potential problems before they escalate, and deliver exceptional support experiences that foster loyalty and satisfaction.

3. Send helpful notifications and reminder messages

Timely and relevant notifications can significantly enhance the customer experience and build trust. Consider sending proactive alerts for:

• Shipping updates: Notify customers when their order has been shipped, is out for delivery, or has been delivered.
• Service interruptions: Alert customers about planned maintenance or outages to manage expectations and minimise frustration.
• Payment reminders: Remind customers about upcoming bills or subscription renewals to avoid missed payments and service disruptions.
• Personalised recommendations: Based on past purchases or browsing behaviour, suggest new products or services that might interest the customer.
• Account activity: Notify customers of suspicious activity or password changes to ensure the security of their accounts.

By keeping customers informed and anticipating their needs, you can build stronger relationships and foster loyalty.

4. Forecast staffing needs

Accurately predicting customer demand is crucial for proactive customer service. By analysing historical data and seasonality trends, you can forecast fluctuations in customer enquiries and adjust your staffing levels accordingly.

This proactive approach ensures that you have enough agents available to handle peak periods and prevent long wait times. Workforce forecasting also helps you avoid overstaffing during slower periods, optimising your resources and reducing unnecessary costs.

5. Gather customer feedback regularly and build a feedback loop

Actively seeking customer feedback is essential for understanding their needs and identifying areas for improvement. Implement regular surveys, feedback forms, or in-app prompts to gather customer insights. Analyse the feedback and use it to refine your products, services, and support processes.

Make sure to close the feedback loop by communicating with customers about how their input is being used to enhance their experience. This demonstrates that you value their opinions and are committed to continuous improvement.

6. Build a knowledge base

A well-structured and easily accessible knowledge base is a cornerstone of proactive customer service. Creating a comprehensive repository of information, including a FAQ page, help centre articles, and troubleshooting guides, empowers customers to find answers before they become actual issues and turn into more tickets in the queue. These self-service resources reduce the need for customers to contact support, freeing up your agents to focus on more complex enquiries.

To ensure your knowledge base remains effective and up-to-date—before a customer or teammate has to flag it—harness AI to help you identify knowledge gaps, refine existing content, and proactively create new articles that address emerging customer needs. Maintaining an updated knowledge base helps you proactively mitigate potential problems by ensuring your customers can access the most accurate information.

7. Provide agents with robust customer profiles

Agents equipped with comprehensive customer profiles have a secret weapon that helps deliver personalised service in a way that is simply not possible otherwise.

A robust customer profile could include:

• Contact information: Name, email, phone number, etc.
• Purchase history: Products or services purchased, dates, amounts, etc.
• Support interactions: Previous enquiries, resolutions, etc.
• Preferences: Communication channels, language, etc.
• Social media activity: Mentions, reviews, etc.

With this information at their fingertips, agents can quickly understand the customer's context, tailor their responses, and offer relevant solutions. That makes for a smoother and more satisfying experience.

8. Harness real-time service data

Real-time monitoring of service data gives businesses a comprehensive understanding of their support operations. Utilising dashboards and analytics tools, you can track crucial customer service metrics like average response time, first contact resolution rate, customer satisfaction, and individual agent performance, as well as measure customer experience. This allows you to identify emerging trends, pinpoint bottlenecks in your processes, and proactively address potential issues before they escalate.

9. Assemble the right team and empower them

Proactive customer service starts from the inside and works its way out to the customer. Hire people passionate about helping others and give them the tools and resources they need to provide great customer service. Train customer service reps on how to deal with problems, be proactive in customer service, and support customers before they ask for it.

Examples of proactive customer care

Let’s look at a few companies that are applying proactive customer service strategies to improve the customer experience.

Liberty London uses Zendesk AI to get customers to where they need to be

Zendesk AI has helped luxury department store Liberty London level up its customer experience strategy. The intelligent triage system proactively addresses customer needs by swiftly categorising and assigning incoming support tickets based on their content and urgency. This ensures enquiries are directed to the most suitable agent or team without delay, minimising wait times and demonstrating a commitment to prompt assistance. Automating this process has allowed Liberty London to anticipate and address customer concerns efficiently, creating a more seamless and satisfying support experience.

With Zendesk AI handling routine tasks like ticket classification and routing, Liberty's agents can focus on more complex and high-value interactions. This proactive allocation of resources enables agents to provide personalised assistance and solutions, fostering stronger customer relationships and ultimately improving overall satisfaction.

Motel Rocks taps AI agents to encourage customers to self-serve

Fashion retailer Motel Rocks is leveraging Zendesk AI to proactively guide customers toward self-service solutions like knowledge base articles or FAQs to improve overall support efficiency. Since implementing Zendesk, Motel Rocks has increased its self-service rate by 206 percent.

Additionally, Motel Rocks uses Zendesk to help agents automatically analyse customer sentiment in chat and email messages, providing valuable insights to tailor their responses effectively. This real-time sentiment analysis allows the team to address negative issues promptly and proactively, such as identifying a potential problem with a shipping carrier based on a sudden influx of negative feedback.

Hootsuite uses Zendesk to deliver real-time global support at scale

With the help of Zendesk AI agents, Hootsuite, a social media management tool, has streamlined its support workflows and reduced first reply time by 36 percent. AI-powered agents handle various tasks, from answering common questions to guiding customers through troubleshooting processes, ensuring immediate assistance and a seamless customer experience.

The integration of AI agents has also improved ticket routing, ensuring that customer enquiries reach the right team or agent with the appropriate skill set. This proactive approach increases efficiency and ensures that customers receive timely and accurate solutions to their problems.

Shopify leverages Zendesk to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities

Shopify, a leading e-commerce platform, experienced explosive growth, with its merchant base surging from 20,000 to over 300,000 in just four years. To meet the demands of this rapidly expanding customer base, Shopify turned to Zendesk to transform its customer service operations.

Zendesk became the central hub for all customer interactions, providing agents with a unified view of merchant enquiries and historical data. This streamlined communication and enabled agents to offer personalised assistance efficiently. Moreover, the powerful analytics tools allowed Shopify to gain valuable insights into customer behaviour and preferences.

Leveraging these insights, Shopify implemented proactive customer support strategies. They utilised the API to spot potential opportunities for upselling and cross-selling in real time, based on each merchant's unique product usage and business needs. This enhanced the customer experience and empowered merchants to grow their businesses more effectively.

Spoonflower implemented Zendesk to supplement their customer service

Global fabric and decor marketplace Spoonflower implemented Zendesk to proactively supplement their customer service. By integrating Zendesk with an AI-powered platform, Spoonflower automates ticket routing and guides customers towards self-service resources in their knowledge base. This led to a 45 percent ticket deflection rate, freeing up agents to focus on complex issues.

Spoonflower also utilises The Proactive Campaigns add-on to send targeted customer messages, including shipping updates, order confirmations, and personalised recommendations. By anticipating customer needs and providing timely information, Spoonflower improves the overall customer experience.

Rhythm Energy tapped Zendesk to maintain a seamless customer experience

Rhythm Energy, a Texas-based retail electric provider specialising in renewable energy, encountered an unprecedented surge in customer demand during a statewide power crisis. To maintain a seamless customer experience amid this rapid growth, Rhythm Energy implemented Zendesk as their comprehensive CX solution.

Recognising the need for proactive customer care, Rhythm Energy tapped into the AI's capabilities to address common customer enquiries outside of business hours. The Zendesk AI agent provided instant responses to frequently asked questions, alleviating customer concerns and ensuring timely communication. This proactive approach helped to establish trust and reassure customers during a critical period.

Frequently asked questions

Implement proactive customer care today

As your industry, company, and products evolve, it’s time to reevaluate your customer service strategy and methods of communication. In the world of good customer service, there are more ways than ever to reach consumers instantly: the web, mobile, messaging, social media, live chat, and more
Proactive customer support and engagement can help you meet your audience’s needs, get in front of problems, and ensure important information is easily available.

Instead of leaving your customers to fend for themselves, a customer service solution like Zendesk can enable your business to nurture lasting relationships.

Try Zendesk today and provide proactive customer service from day one.