In his second guest post for Mind the Product, customer support executive Rob Armstrong explores how customer support can be integrated into a product strategy.
In an earlier article, “Why customer support is a vital part of brand promise,” I discussed how well-integrated support can be a key differentiator. Effective support is the result of intentional strategy, strong operational capabilities, and leadership that can build, empower, and grow teams, alongside customer-facing tools and technologies to deliver the desired customer experiences.
But how can organizations actually introduce and integrate support into their product strategy? Here are some insights, although each organization will have unique needs and requirements. Perhaps this can spark new discussions or ideas for your team.
Customer Support from a Product Management Perspective
One way for Product Managers to integrate with Customer Support is by considering it both as a feature and as a stakeholder. Integrate support seamlessly into the product by embedding help resources within the UI where customers might need assistance. For example, Intuit uses “what’s this” tags that link to help content and support contacts. Tools like Pendo and Whatfix also facilitate these types of integrations effectively.
Partnerships with Support can help build self-help resources, including online, interactive, and direct support options. Identify where customers might have questions or need additional help, and design the UI to direct them to the appropriate support resources.
Extend the brand promise through support. If your brand mission is “To inspire and innovate,” ensure that the support model is also innovative. At athenahealth, our brand promise was to deliver innovative healthcare technology and services for better outcomes, and we worked closely across product and support teams to maintain this promise.
Leverage support data and insights. Support organizations often have high volumes of customer interactions, which are invaluable for gathering insights on product usage, customer needs, and usability. By capturing and analyzing this data, support can partner with other teams like product, onboarding, and sales to create shared value through robust analytics and engagement platforms.
Customer Support from an Organizational Perspective
As a support leader, I’ve had success by fostering formal and meaningful collaboration between support and product teams. Regular joint business reviews can help assess and align strategies, initiatives, and outcomes. This engagement needs support at the executive level and should be communicated internally.
Another effective strategy is embedding support resources within product or scrum teams. These roles act as a bridge between support and product teams, driving joint strategy and sharing valuable data. I experienced this at Microsoft, where I worked on a complex database product. By bringing data on common customer issues to the product team, we developed UI “wizards” that greatly improved the user experience and reduced support needs.
Conclusion
Integrating customer support into the product strategy effectively can make it a key differentiator. When aligned, support and product teams can significantly enhance brand loyalty, customer satisfaction, and metrics like retention and Net Promoter Score (NPS). Are there opportunities for your organization to achieve this?