Customer Support

To be successful, new products or services must offer benefits that meet the needs of your customers at a price that customers are willing to pay. This means considering your customers in the product research, design and development stages as well as thinking about the types of customer support services you may need once your product reaches the market.

Aspects of customer support you may need to consider as part of your planning include:

• devising key performance indicators that will help you to determine how and when you are meeting your customer service needs
• looking at quality assurance aspects of your new product or services
• setting up processes to deal with customer questions, feedback, complaints or requests for help
• setting up processes to manage conflict or disputes
• setting up systems and programs that encourage customer loyalty
• being aware of any safety, security or discrimination issues that may affect your customers' relationship with your new products or services
• being aware of any fair trading issues that may affect your advertising, billing, sales or customer support programs
• devising fair and relevant refund, returns, lay-by and credit policies

Working with customers

These pages will help you to research and plan your customer support strategies. Includes measuring customer service levels, quality assurance, handling customer feedback and complaints, customer loyalty programs, fair trading, equal opportunity, managing conflict, refunds, lay-by, credit and non-contact sales.