6 Reasons Every Company Needs a Customer Service Roadmap

Contributed By:

Leyla Seka

- Guest Writer

SVP & GM of Desk.com

In today’s hyperconnected world, your product is only as good as the service you back it with. It’s easy for small companies to think of customer service as just a checkbox item, but to be competitive and offer a seamless experience as you grow, you need to look ahead.

Planning how to evolve your customer service in advance is becoming as critical to your business as setting your product roadmap. Here at Desk.com, we talk to a lot of fast-­growing companies about how to future-­proof their customer support. Here are six reasons you need to build a service roadmap so you can be sure to offer amazing service, no matter how fast you grow.



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1. You plan to support multiple channels.

Most small businesses start out by supporting customers exclusively with email, and maybe Twitter, but as their company and customer base grows, they may need to add real­-time support via phone or live chat to keep up with requests.
Related: 7 Key Steps to a Growth Strategy That Works Immediately
Making the transition is a big step. Not only do you need the tools to support this effort, but you may need a different type of agent. Phone agents need a good phone presence. Chat agents need to be able to multi­task as they typically work more than one case at a time. For different types of agents you need different training materials. And you need a different version of your knowledge base for agents to pull answers from (the answers typically used on email will be too long for chat).

                                                               
                                                            

2. You may tier your support team as you grow.

Small businesses typically start out with one or two customer-service agents that answer all inquiries, but as you grow you need to segment that out. This is especially important for complex products and technology.
Most businesses will have a first-response tier who will figure out what the problem is and route customers to the right agents. As a company gets even bigger there might be a third layer of engineering experts who handle the really gnarly calls.
Deciding in advance how you will tier your support team will enable to you to put the right systems and people in place to divide and conquer support requests without disruption.

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3. Your business will expand geographically.

If you start to support customers in different time zones, you may need to expand the hours that you offer support or look to hire local support agents in those regions. You may need to rethink how you route cases to let agents just starting their days easily pick up cases from agents that are ending theirs.
Language is another consideration. Not only do you need a support solution that is multi­lingual but you need to be sure that your knowledge articles are translated into multiple languages and that you have a plan for curation and maintenance so that agents and customers can get up-to-date answers in every language.

4. You may outsource some of your service.

It’s typical for growing companies to outsource some of their support operations (usually the tier one front lines) to a third party, especially if they expand across the globe or start offering service-level agreements that require a rapid response. This isn’t something that can happen overnight.

Related: 7 Ways to Provide Exceptional Customer Service for Ecommerce (Infographic)

You need to look at the best ways to share information, route cases and seamlessly pass cases back and forth. Training is also important. It can take longer than you ever thought possible to work with an outsourced call center to make them sound smart and represent your brand correctly, but to offer customers a quality experience you need to invest the time.

5. You need to integrate with other business systems.

When you put a customer-service solution in place, you need to consider what the most important systems powering your business are, and if and how you will need to integrate with them. There are typically two ways to integrate systems.

The first is via data, so that you can visualize one system within another, for example making it easy for you agents to view shipping data in your support solution so that they can quickly and accurately respond to delivery questions.

The second kind of integration is when an action in one system triggers an action in another. For example, if an agent identifies a bug in a product it can be automatically logged in Jira so that it can be fixed quickly and everyone stays in sync.

6. You’re hoping to grow really fast.

Sure, you’d like to be the next Lyft or FitBit, but growing fast can be a downer if you’re caught off guard. I’ve already mentioned some of the things that you need to plan for, such as global expansion and what systems you need to integrate with, but you should also think about whether you will be supporting multiple brands and products over time and whether your customer support solution can scale as you grow.

Can you accommodate call centers around the globe? Can you customize it as your needs change? Can you integrate with complex back­office and ERP systems if needed?
Rapid growth is every small business’s dream. To make sure your company easily scales, be sure to think ahead about every aspect of your business including customer service. With the right advanced planning, fast growth will be a reason to celebrate.

Market Research Is Key to Recognizing Licensing Opportunities

Contributed By:

Pete Canalichio

- Guest Writer

Managing Partner, Licensing Brands, Inc.

Companies extend their brands via licensing for a variety of reasons. Licensing enables companies with brands that have high preference to unlock their brands’ latent value and satisfy pent-up demand. Through licensing, brand owners can enter new categories practically overnight, gaining them immediate brand presence on store shelves and often in the media. In fact, there are a significant number of benefits that make licensing attractive to brand owners.

By licensing their brands, companies can satisfy consumer needs in categories outside their core business. When Apple launched the iPod a number of years ago they revolutionized how people listen to their music. The iPod was so successful that its quick acceptance created an immediate need for accessories such as armbands, adapters and auto chargers. Apple could have chosen to manufacture and distribute these accessories themselves. Instead, Apple decided that these accessories were not core to their business expertise and therefore chose to satisfy the need through licensing.


                                   


By licensing the iPod brand, Apple enabled a tremendous number of companies to produce all kinds of terrific products to make the iPod more user-friendly and to enhance the listening experience. Examples of licensed products for the iPod include the Bose Sound System with iPod docking station, the Nike+ running shoe, auto adaptor kits, armbands and many other products. All these accessories are sold by licensees.

Some licensors see licensing as an opportunity to “test” the viability of a new category without making a major investment in new manufacturing processes, machinery or facilities. In a well-run licensing program, the brand owner maintains control over the brand image and how it’s portrayed (via the approvals process and other contractual structures), positioning itself to reap the benefit of additional revenue (royalties) and brand exposure through new channels and incremental shelf space. For example, Rubbermaid gained additional revenue and brand presence by licensing kitty litter containers that are sold in the mass channel core to Rubbermaid, and in specialty pet shops core to United Pet Group, their licensee.

Once the list of possible extensions has been trimmed to those qualified and most lucrative, brand owners should then conduct an industry and competitive analysis of each category to determine the size of the market, competitive set, industry growth rate and competitive nature. This analysis will enable the brand owner to determine whether it makes sense to even enter the category. Techniques to use include a Strengths – Weaknesses – Opportunities – Threats (SWOT) analysis or a Porter’s Five Forces Analysis. These methods are helpful in evaluating a business or a project from a strategic point of view. They involve specifying the objective of the venture and identifying the external and internal factors that are favorable or unfavorable to achieving that objective and to determining the attractiveness of the venture.

After this analysis is completed, the brand owner is empowered with a prioritized list of potential categories from which to move. At this point, he should assess whether it is better to execute the product in house or issue a license to a manufacturer which can then take the product to market. We will leave how to select the ideal licensee for a future article.

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Determining a brand’s extendibility and the product categories in which it can sell takes understanding the brand’s vision, architecture and positioning and the value it provides. Before brands license products into new categories they need to conduct market research, including a review of secondary research, focus groups, interviews and field surveys to clearly understand what consumers believe about the brand and what their expectations are. Each category should then be evaluated on the prominence of brand associations, favorable associations inferred by the extension and uniqueness of association from the new category.