Many of the contacts coming into live contact centers could be handled through self-service features by customers instead of agents. According to Brian Strauss, goMoxie VP of Worldwide Field Engineering, 80% of contacts into the contact center are made up of just 4 to 6 industry-specific topics (e.g. order and shipping questions for a retail customer or banking customers having issues with password lockout).
A frequently asked questions section is common practice for many online companies, but some users might not have the patience to comb through it. Older generations or new to digital users won’t know to look for it. Being proactive is key: people don’t always reach out when they are struggling. They don’t always know when or why they are hesitating with moving forward in a process.
Proactive guidance is a new context-based way to interact with your customers. Using analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), you can anticipate customer hesitation points based on certain behaviors or on prior customer interactions.
Guide, don’t hide from your customers
A tip, a suggestion, a video, a buying guide, or a link proactively served just-in-time when the customer experiences friction can eliminate this struggle and hesitation all together. Guidance is in context and speaks to a specific behavior, situation, or step in the journey, that customers are in at that exact point in time.
Proactive guidance and contextual engagements are automated and rules based. A live agent does not need to be available to offer this type of engagement. That means you can engage every single person who fits the use case 24/7. This is a valuable experience for customers because it means that contextual help is always available.
Keep in mind that digital guidance should not replace digital channels like chat and email. Chat has and email are useful when interactions require human assistance.
The process is simple, here’s how proactive guidance works:
For instance, a customer who toggles between product pages may be confused about which product is right for them. Or, a financial institution may know, based on previous customer experience, that they receive a higher than normal number of calls about a particular field on the form.
Using that information, you can proactively provide customers with the information they need to make decisions and move forward. For example, a retail store that sells jeans online can provide customers with a sizing video. The financial institution can provide guidance on
that tricky form field at the first sign of hesitation – before the consumer even realizes they are confused.
Customers feel supported and delighted. This in turn helps support (and delight) your customers while reaching your goals. Proactive guidance is a win-win for all parties.
Proactive Guidance: A Three-Year 701% ROI
In 2019, Forrester Research conducted a Total Economic Impact Study (TEI™) on goMoxie’s contextual guidance application, CONTEXT. Forrester interviewed several customers across retail, banking and insurance to understand the ROI achieved by using proactive guidance.
Before implementing CONTEXT, many customers interviewed relied on internal development teams to optimize the digital customer experience. As you can imagine, this isn’t very cost effective or quick to deploy.
With CONTEXT, members of marketing, digital product and contact center groups could directly impact and optimize the digital customer experience, without any IT involvement. Proactive guidance was deployed within two days on average compared to 3-4 weeks. Conversions improved and customer contact volume decreased. Best of all, both employees and customers experienced increased satisfaction.
The quantified benefits in the TEI study reveal quite the impact on performance. When Forrester adds it all up, typical CONTEXT customer experiences an ROI of over 700% over three years—a number that speaks for itself.
You can no longer rely on simply bringing potential customers to your digital channels and hope that the prospects reach out for help when needed. Instead Marketing, Sales and Customer Service leaders need to take the initiative and reach out to prospects before they even ask. Proactive guidance is a powerful tool in building consumer confidence that they are making the right choice with your product and services.
