Supporting your product

- Another operational area to cover in your business plan…is how are you going to support your product or service?…Just because you sell it, doesn't mean you're done.…What's it going to take to deliver aftercare?…To handle returns?…To deliver customer service…when your customers have questions?…How are you going to staff that service?…Are you going to insource it and have people…within your organization who do it?…Are you going to outsource it to another organization?…Are you going to make it self-help?…What are the expectations that your customers…are going to have for this support?…How many calls do you expect?…How many incidents are you going to handle?…What's the return rate on your product going to be?…And what expertise is going to be required…to handle some of these issues?…You need to spell out all of these operational components…in your business plan, because if you don't think about them…you're going to have operational challenges down the road.…

Let's look at an example.…When the internet was first booming,…