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When engaging with your favorite company, how often do you hear from them? Do you get a call checking in on your experience whether you’ve made a purchase or not? Do they send you a coupon for no reason other than as a thank you for the purchases you’ve made in the past? Do they instead ignore you until an issue arises and they’re essentially obligated to take your call?

This is the difference between proactive customer contact and the traditional inbound call center. The latter is designed to manage calls as they come in, putting out fires and answering questions as they arise, but ignoring the customer otherwise. The former, however, is designed to focus on the consumer-business relationship, securing the loyalty of the customer.

The proactive customer contact center has a lot to do to stay on top of this approach to quality customer care. As such, it is important that companies take advantage of a predictive dialer so that customer care agents can stay focused on the customer and not on making the initial connection. Because customers are four times more likely to deflect to the competition if a problem is service-related, focus on the customer experience is essential.

Let’s consider a few other important statistics: one unresolved negative experience requires as many as 12 positive experiences to offset the effect; 20 percent of your existing customers will generate 80 percent of your future revenue; and customer satisfaction within the contact center greatly affects the customers’ willingness to make another purchase, remain loyal and recommend a company to friends.

If it takes only one bad experience for a customer to leave a brand, seamless, proactive engagement is critical. You already know that it costs more money to acquire a new client than it does to keep one you have. Why not focus your efforts where you know it will produce positive outcomes? And if you do it well, your customers will tell their friends. Waiting for the customer to contact you is the old way of doing things, and that simply won’t cut it in today’s environment.

However, it’s just as bad if you use the predictive dialer to inundate your customers with a scripted speech designed for the mass market. Consumers only want to hear from you if you have something relevant and valuable to share.

For instance, I have a number of assets purchased through GoDaddy. A few times a year, an agent calls me to check on me, ask if everything is going well and if I have any questions. They generally ask a few personalized questions as well so it’s easier for me to answer. While I don’t always have something that needs to be addressed, the fact that they reach out just to be sure is certainly great customer service.

The point here is that consumer expectations have changed, which means your approach to customer interaction also has to change. If you’re not using the predictive dialer, integrated with your customer relationship management platform to ensure optimal value from these interactions, you’re missing out on key opportunities for sustainable growth.