Businesses that think miles ahead for their future have roadmaps.

Whether it’s for a range of products or for technology solutions, it’s a great idea to have a long-term plan and a concrete idea of how you see your company in the coming years.

Since customer support is as crucial a business component as the technology you use to deliver it, having a customer service roadmap could contribute a lot to your evolution.

But how do you start? Desk.com published an e-book listing down six areas to put into consideration when future-proofing your company’s customer service. See how solid your business strategy will become by incorporating the following in your roadmap.

1. Multi-channeling plans

   

   Transitioning from traditional to digital customer service is a big leap, and it would take extra steps if you’re planning to open more than one point of contact. From tools to training modules, you need a proper outline of how you will be able to carry out assistance through email, phone, live chat, or social media.

 

2. Support tiering

   

   As your consumer base expands and as you add communication platforms, it’s natural to come to a point when you have to decide if it’s time to tier your support. The three-member customer care team that you started with may need to double or be segmented in time. So, it’s advisable to know in advance how you will route calls and assign responses according to agent expertise level even before the need arises.

 

3. International expansion

   

   When you start going global, your customer service reach should expand with you. The time zone, language, and cultural differences may require you to offer multilingual support 24/7. Not only that, your website, knowledge base, and the published content on your website and social media pages may need to be updated to different versions, depending on the languages you support.

 

4. Outsourcing plans

   

   Outsourcing is a typical move for growing companies that need aid in handling their tiered support and international client base without shelling out too much. When the time comes that the demand for outsourced customer support should be addressed, it’s good to have ready business ideas about the tasks and roles to be farmed out, as well as the information that you and your offshore provider must share.

 

5. System integration

   

   Some time in the future, you may need to integrate customer support with important systems that powering your business. You’ll need to start with data aggregation so that agents are able to view a visual representation of crucial client details and respond to questions accurately. The other kind of integration is applied to an action that triggers another action in the system. For instance, when an agent spots a product glitch, it can be automatically fixed after he logs it.

 

6. Rapid growth

   

   Seeing your business boom in such a short span of time is good, but if you’re caught off-guard, the sudden growth may overwhelm you. This is why your roadmap needs to be developed through careful strategic planning, and should not just cover global expansion and system integration; it should also answer how your brand and customer support solution would scale over time.

 

Your customer service roadmap should outline the level of customer experience, satisfaction, and loyalty that your company will give years from now. To keep up with upcoming changes and evolutions, you must have a long-term business strategy that covers how to ideally scale and integrate your channels, processes, market reach, and systems.

Get in touch with us today and we’ll help you successfully ply your roadmap with our cost-effective solutions. Whether it’s for global expansion through multilingual call center or growing your local business with back office support, Open Access BPO has you covered.