3 Strategies for Proactive Support

Support teams are becoming a more strategic driver of customer success. With AI and automation reducing ticket volume, it’s opening the door for customer service leaders to go beyond quick resolution and think more creatively about new ways to help customers succeed. 

Forward-thinking, customer-driven companies are embracing more proactive support tactics that deliver help before customers even think to ask. This shift helps create smoother experiences while building long-term loyalty.

In our recent webinar, How to Make Customer Service More Proactive, Alex Friend, VP of Marketing at Stonly, and Alexis Fogel, CEO & Product Leader at Stonly, shared three proven strategies for making this shift towards proactive customer service. In this recap, we’ll cover those strategies, explore examples from leading teams, and share how you can start implementing them today.

Watch the full recording here. 

What is proactive customer service?

Proactive customer service is the practice of anticipating customer needs and addressing them before they escalate into issues. Instead of waiting for a support ticket, proactive teams use self-service tactics to provide guidance, education and solutions in advance.

Benefits of proactive customer service include:

• Lower ticket volume by addressing issues before customers contact support
• Higher customer satisfaction because customers feel supported without needing to ask
• Better retention through guidance that helps customers get more value from your product

Unlike reactive customer service, which focuses on fixing problems after they occur, proactive support through self-service builds customer confidence and loyalty by showing you care about their success. 

How to make customer service more proactive

1. Integrate help directly into the product

The fastest way to get started with proactive support is to bring help to customers exactly where they need it. Ideally, help should never be more than one or two clicks away, so it feels natural and intuitive to the customer. 

Why in-product help works:

When customers can access solutions instantly, they’re less likely to submit a ticket. The key is anticipating friction points and embedding help in context to make customers feel like they never had a problem in the first place. 

Best practices for in-product proactive support:

• Consider common questions or pain points and key places people interact with your company to spot the high-volume issues to solve for. 
• Anticipate when customers will need help and look for behavioral indicators. For example, what issues arise on mobile vs web-based apps? 
• Make self-serve help easy to follow so that contacting support isn’t the default reaction or worse, abandoning the problem altogether.

Ways to implement:

• Always-present help buttons or pills in the bottom of your application that can provide contextual guides and filter the content by the page the customer is viewing. 
• Tooltips and hotspots directly next to the feature to explain them in real time.
• Banners and pop-ups to quickly communicate changes, fixes or outages without code support from development teams.
• Triggered help content based on specific user actions or interface rules. For example, instead of just an error message when a customer forgets they’re password, launch a guide that offers instructions on how to reset a password. 

2. Guide new and existing customer to success

Support teams know customer challenges and needs better than anyone in the organization. By the support team partnering with the product team, who are most likely already working on in-app guidance, it can be even more successful.

Why ongoing guidance is powerful:

Proactive customer service doesn’t stop at onboarding. Continued guidance throughout the customer journey can boost product adoption, increase retention and even drive upsells. 

Best practices for ongoing proactive customer service:

• Surface best practices guides when customers are likely to need them or could use a refresher on since onboarding.
• Share timely product updates to keep customers informed, engaged and expand their knowledge of what they’re able to do with your product or services.
• Tailor guidance to the customer’s journey stage to make it specific and relevant so it’s more likely to be consumed and appreciated. 

Ways to implement:

• Release notes delivered in-app or via email that are relevant to the correct subset of people.
• Product tours highlighting new or overlooked features to help customers achieve their task and get them engaged right at the beginning. 
• Pop-ups or hotspots triggered by specific use cases that are carefully time based on their comfort level or experience in the product to avoid feeling overwhelmed. 
• Checklists that walk customers through advanced features or best practices to keep them on track. 

3. Use AI to maximize every customer interaction

AI opens the door for proactive support at scale in high-volume inbound channels. By training conversational AI models on your knowledge base and customer history, you can ensure customers receive fast, accurate and context-aware help.

Why AI is key to proactive support:

AI can identify intent, detect patterns and surface the most relevant solutions, sometimes before the customer even formulates a question. Optimizing this one place can make an high impact on your customer touchpoints. 

Best practices for AI-powered proactive customer service:

• Configure AI to better understand the customer’s intent when they ask a question and predict needs.
• Use AI not just to answer questions, but to recommend next steps based on the solution so that it’s more valuable to your customers. 
• Continuously work to improve AI responses to ensure accuracy and consistency.

Ways to implement:

• AI chatbots that deliver contextual answers and resources to make it easy when people have a question. 
• Proactive suggestions in search or chat based on patterns in user behavior or follow-up questions.
• Automated alerts that notify customers about potential problems or opportunities. For example, if asking about a specific integration offer more information around the topic or flag for a potential to upsell. 

Putting it all together: Combining reactive with proactive support

Proactive customer service works best when it moves from ideas to daily practice. Each of the three strategies, embedding help in the product, guiding customers throughout their journey and leveraging AI, become more powerful when layered together.

Start by identifying a single high-impact opportunity: a feature where customers often get stuck, an onboarding milestone that could use better guidance, or a high-volume question your AI could handle more effectively. Then expand as you see results.

Support teams that embrace a proactive approach aren’t just improving resolution times—they’re reshaping the customer experience. Every step you take toward anticipating needs builds stronger relationships, reduces friction, and positions your team as a true driver of success.

Watch the webinar to learn how Stonly helps bring proactive support to life

The 30-minute webinar includes live examples, implementation tips and actionable advice. Watch the full recording here.

Summary: 3 Strategies for Proactive Support

Proactive customer service anticipates customer needs and solves potiential issues before they arise. Three proven strategies to make your customers more successful through self-service include:

1. Embed help in the product so answers are always one click away.
2. Guide customers throughout their journey to boost adoption and retention.
3. Leverage AI to scale proactive support in high-volume channels.

These tactics reduce ticket volume, improve satisfaction and strengthen loyalty.

Frequently asked questions on proactive customer service

What is proactive support?

Proactive support is an approach where customer service teams anticipate needs and deliver solutions before customers encounter problems.

What’s the difference between proactive and reactive support?

Reactive support responds to issues after they happen. Proactive support prevents problems by delivering guidance, embedded help, and AI-powered assistance in advance.

What are examples of proactive support?

Examples include in-app tooltips, contextual help, proactive live chat suggestions, release notes, and onboarding checklists.

How can AI improve proactive customer service?

AI can analyze customer behavior, predict potential problems, and surface relevant guidance, helping customers get the right help at the right time.

How do I start implementing proactive support?

Start small: embed help in one high-friction area, introduce a product tour for new customers, or train AI to better handle FAQs. Expand as you see results.