“Customer support is an amazing reservoir of insights into what needs to change about the product…We prioritize our roadmap directly based on these insights. This has helped us to evolve our product and release features which we know in advance people will love” – Joel Gascoigne
Companies are mushrooming everywhere, with each one claiming that it has the better product. The fact is that unless a company can back this claim by top class customer service, the best products would not be of much use. Customer service is no longer an item on a ‘to-do list’, but rather a steady focus on and relentless pursuit of it will make a company competitive and become the most preferred business partner for customers. Given the importance of this aspect, it makes sense then for a company to have a well-thought out and robust customer service roadmap in place, and part of its overall business strategies. The reality of the customer-company relationship is that it is not stable – for the simple reason that customer expectations and demands are changing rapidly, and a company would be making new strategies daily to keep pace with its customers and the market.
Every company now claims that they are focused on delivering the best service to their customers. However, these claims cannot stand for too long unless backed by a robust customer service roadmap, that will help the company to anticipate customer demands and needs, and deliver top class experiences each time and through every touch-point in the company. A roadmap is a tool that would help a company to continually evolve and better its customer service levels, in order to counter the volatile market conditions and ephemeral nature of customer attention and loyalty. A service roadmap is a way to insure and future-proof the company’s success and relationships with its customers.
Smart companies are those that understand the critical nature of having an unrelenting focus on top class customer service, and ensuring that customers remain engaged and happy throughout their ‘journey’ with the company. However, even though a company may understand the importance of providing great service, the customer service roadmap is often not clear or properly planned. There could be several methods, routes, and decisions a company could take – and each would have their own set of challenges and problems. A detailed customer service roadmap would help to anticipate these challenges and make it easier to meet the customer’s needs, understand their emotions, and know how to deal with the customer’s reasons to buy. A customer service roadmap would take into account all the experiences that a customer may go through when dealing with a company. The idea is to see the entire ‘journey’ of the customer as a whole, rather than breaking it down into parts.
As companies grow, a customer service roadmap becomes more critical. This is because the company’s customers would expect a full-range of service, delivered via multiple channels. A smaller company may rely only on emails and phone calls, but a larger company with a massive customer base, would need to be able to provide a lot more support and service. They would need to keep up with customer queries, requests, and complaints, while connecting with customers via the channel preferred by the customers. Without a clear vision of how your company would handle the extensive support required, it would be extremely hard to keep customers happy. This vision translated to action would serve as the company’s customer service roadmap. Serving more customers and meeting their increasing demands, requires a company to invest additional resources in training and developing their employees, empowering them to multi-task, rewarding their good behaviour and performance, and get in the latest technology in order to further accelerate their efforts. A roadmap is simply a plan that would help a company to stay ahead of the expectations of the customers, and be able to provide proactively them with what they need, without them asking for it.
As a company grows, so must its support teams. While the base level service representatives may be able to field regular and routine queries, a company must ensure that it has a next level of service staff, completely efficient at handling difficult problems and helping customers with high level troubleshooting. In addition, there should also be a team dedicated to handling technical problems, which would be out of the purview of the service staff. With a meticulous customer service roadmap, a company would also have a robust escalation and complaint process in place, such that customers can perceive the dedication and commitment of the company to help them in all situations. It also shows that the company is unafraid of criticism and has the confidence to provide top class service, and make amends in case of a service lapse. Customers find it a lot easier to trust companies that display such fearless commitment.
Businesses are going global – great news for companies and customers across the world. However, without a proper customer service roadmap, it would be very hard for a company to support customers in their local region, across time zones, and varying demographics. A roadmap would show the company what could be done in order to manage its changing business by putting in strategies to better support the customers and gain more revenue. A company could need to revamp its operations by extending its working hours, adding new employees, restructuring the work timings of the employees, hiring local staff in the customer’s region, training the staff in dealing with different cultures and languages, and other such strategies.
As companies grow and expand their business, routine or mundane tasks can hamper the delivery of top class service. A customer service roadmap would help a company to decide which of these tasks would still be required, which ones could be done away with, and which of them could be outsourced to a third party. These decisions, however, are neither easy nor ones that can be made overnight – they require proper planning and efficient handling. A roadmap is a great way for a company to know at which stage it would need to make these decisions, and which would be the best third party partner for them to outsource some of their tasks.
Accelerated growth is something that every business aspires to. A clear vision for how to affect that growth will not suffice without a plan of action. A business succeeds because of its customers and hence a customer service roadmap, would be a great tool to help a company scale rapidly with the support and loyalty of customers, by giving them the kind of service they deserve and expect. A company must seriously consider including a customer service roadmap into its overall business plan. The experiences customers receive would be a lot better, since everyone in the company would understand their role in serving the customers. A documented customer service roadmap would serve as a guide for the employees, and customers would know what they can expect from a company – reducing the stress levels for both sides. As customers receive top class service consistently, they would feel more engaged, connected, and positive about a company and such feelings can only be good for a company.