By Delia Pedersoli, COO, MultiPay
2023 is shaping up to be another challenging period for B2C businesses. While the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic has for now largely disappeared, new challenges like the cost-of-living crisis have arrived. As economic uncertainty impacts every consumer business from retail to travel and leisure experiences, service providers and suppliers must double down on their customer service to help clients through these challenging times. One area of customer service that is particularly important – and often overlooked – is proactivity.
A move to a more proactive customer service approach should not come at the expense of reactive measures. Regardless of how well-prepared customer service teams are and how detailed processes are, there will always be unforeseen and unexpected issues that need to be addressed. But by working in tandem, B2B service providers can deliver the service that customers now expect.
In recent years, the landscape has changed. Customers expect proactivity and for suppliers to understand what they want. Data from Salesforce that covered both consumers and business customers identified that two-thirds of respondents expect the suppliers they buy from to understand their needs and expectations. Not only this, but those that do take a proactive approach to customer service see a full point increase in their NPS.
Delivering a first-class proactive customer service is therefore a key requirement for businesses wanting to build and develop long-term relationships with their customers. However, for many businesses, it can be hard to know what to focus on and improve to attain the proactivity required. At MultiPay we have made proactivity a core part of our customer service, which has allowed us to identify several important factors.
A proactive process
The first area to focus on is getting close to customers. The more you know about a customer, how their business works, what the goals are and where there are challenges all helps in identifying areas to support with a proactive customer service. A good method to structure these insights is to conduct a SWOT analysis. Knowing the strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities of a client helps identify areas that may need support soon. On top of this, it is important to invest time in speaking with clients. Not only will this help with the SWOT, but it can also highlight areas for operational improvements. Speaking with people from across the business allows you to truly get under its skin.
Knowledge is power when it comes to enhancing the proactivity of customer service. In addition to getting under the skin of a business, it is also important to understand its industry inside and out. Staying on top of key trends, themes, and issues affecting a client’s industry and sector helps with remaining on the front foot. Recently at MultiPay, we experienced a scenario that brought this home, working with one of Europe’s largest tourism operators, The Travel Corporation (TTC) which needed to bounce back quickly following the Covid-19 pandemic. With consumers excited to travel again, TTC needed a customer service and payments solution that could quickly scale and support its on-the-move workforce of travel directors. Working closely with TTC’s team along with monitoring the news and industry trends like the lifting of travel restrictions we were able to be proactive in scaling up operations in anticipation of key markets reopening. Staying ahead of the curve meant we were prepared to deliver new or replacement payment terminals at very short notice to travel directors anywhere in Europe. As a result, we eliminated the risk of downtime and loss of earnings that TTC could have suffered if there had been delays.
Planning for success
In addition to knowing a client’s business and their sector inside and out, it is also important to remember that no two businesses are ever the same. While some tactics and strategies may work for one, they may not translate to another. By getting to know clients, customer service can be tailored to them and their unique needs. Working with TTC for example, we learnt that its travel directors when out in the field, often lack an internet connection. Consequently, they needed to be highly self-sufficient. To achieve this, we developed a bespoke handbook that provided a step-by-step guide to setting up payment devices and solving common issues. On top of this, a dedicated hotline was launched, allowing travel directors to quickly gain help if needed when they did have connectivity. Taking the time to develop tailor-made services specific to TTC and its travel directors, helped provide the agility the business needed and removed pressure from TTC’s internal team.
Of course, before developing a user guide or establishing a hotline a plan needs to be created. Taking the time to meticulously map out the strategy and tactics to support a business is key. Factoring known events or challenges into a plan is vital in getting ahead of them. For instance, as well as navigating the reopening of travel destinations, our work with TTC also meant we had to work around the global chip shortage causing delays in device deliveries. To plan around this, we purposefully pre-ordered additional handsets that could be kept on standby. Then when a request for a new terminal came in, we didn’t have to let the client experience the delays caused by the chip shortage. In doing so we could ensure a smooth flow of devices to travel directors.
With so much uncertainty in the world currently, there has never been more of a need for proactive customer services from B2B suppliers. By building up a knowledge basis of a client’s business, their industry, and then planning and tailoring approaches accordingly, B2B suppliers can help their customers thrive in 2023 while also emerging as true partners. When uncertainty hits as much as we are now seeing, planning, and proactively become more important than ever.
