Global Support – The changing Mantra

The corporate landscape has changed globally in the last decade. This has primarily been dictated by economics, unearthing of talent pools, and advances in technology. This has resulted in a variety of activities like outsourcing, off-shoring, etc. It has also resulted in geographically and culturally diverse teams working seamlessly to deliver products or services to a globally diverse customer base. While delivery of products is a challenge in its own right, supporting global consumers of these products is a challenge as well. How do you address this in an evolving flat world?

Have international “presence” of support
This does not necessarily mean that you need to have personnel in every continent. This means that customers anywhere should have the means to access support from the vendor with reasonable response time and acceptable answers. This should happen despite time differences in areas under consideration. This goes beyond direct, phone or email support.

Use advanced technology in supporting customers
Phone, email support has given way to web support. Online case resolution, knowledge databases promote self service. Discussion forums, online communities and social networks promote many-to-many interactions from subject matter experts (SMEs) that might reside outside the corporation in the customer base.

Specialize content
Customers care about specialized content related to their issues. Corporations need to focus on providing them content focused towards addressing that need. This could relate to customer profiles developed over time.

Have multiple channels of escalation
Customers should not feel trapped by self-service only. They should have the power and ability to escalate issues via other channels – a combination of email, web and self-service - if need be.

Make the interaction secure
This will make customers feel comfortable sharing their data with agents instead of asking for on-site support.

Offer incentives to customers to use self-service
Small incentives can go a long way. Offer knick-knacks for customers to use self-service. Have customers email in articles of successful experiences and have a periodic award for the best contributor. Also highlight contributors of answers on your forum. Recognition can be a motivator for people to contribute.

Routinely educate customers on new developments
This can be done via newsletters, podcasts, webinars etc. Customers can come to know about new features, releases, known issues, added solutions in the knowledge base, best practices etc. By doing this you are attempting to decrease your call volume before agent interaction.