Start-up - no teams at this stage, responsibilities are shared, founders doing everything, 1 or 2 employees only, before you start hiring/ scaling

Two engines of a business: Business development & service delivery

Journey of business scaling - raising capital, hiring, formation of teams, departmentalizing/ decentralising, establishing hierarchies, communication channels, metrics, discipline, measurement, proces

Operations’ role in delivery and product creation - financial leadership in the operations team gives inputs on capital budgeting, investment decisions, and on financial risk management in operations

Pre & post customer onboarding

Customer retention & engagement

Delays & failure in product/service delivery post & pre

Increase in customer support escalations and refund requests

Low NPS, CSAT

Negative feedback: online + word of mouth

Angry customers

Long-term risks for growth: outbound, inbound sales and referrals

Issues in payment management: Data recording and follow up actions

Aligning operational strategies with the larger financial goals of the startup/ SME

Communication of the value of operational initiatives to the Board

SME/ startup-relevant balancing of short-term profitability with long-term growth

Identification of opportunities for improvisation in process

Analyzing product/ service feedback and improvisation of product/ service

Devising and communicating process improvement strategies to the senior management

Handle increasing complexity on the fly

Build systems & processes to track from ground up

Measure effectiveness & plug gaps

Hire & train workforce, delegate tasks

Set performance metrics with the right incentive

Keep the focus on solving customer problems

Don’t bury/minimise the issue

Set reporting standards & discipline

Ensure complete data without discrepancies

Create meaningful reports for the big picture

Highlight breakdowns and gaps

Manage upwards

Gathering insights: Learn how to conduct product/ service surveys, share questionnaires, use data analytics to understand your customers & their needs

Measuring customer response using KPIs: Select and set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for customer satisfaction, such as time to first value, user activation/ registration rates, or customer satisf

Design a customer-friendly onboarding experience, with easily doable steps: Walkthroughs, video-based tutorials can be employed as well

Designing automated email sequences: Effective for dealing with routine queries

Conducting feedback surveys, getting feedback forms filled, review onboarding metrics to understand what’s working, what’s not

How do you know when your customer onboarding process is working?

How to set up and utilise ZenDesk/ ZohoDesk/ Hiver

How to implement cloud telephoning tools like Avaya, OzoneTel, Exotel

How to set up in-built automations, workflows, tagging, automation and reporting

How to set timelines and targets for agents and measure performance

Using AI-powered tools to draft responses and summarise interactions

How to create templates and training

How to create a knowledge base

Having automated responses in place for specific queries

How to deal with robotic and mechanical responses and add human element in customer support responses

How and when to communicate with engineering teams

When to give product feedback

How to succeed as a customer support agent

Critical customer support metrics to measure

When to go beyond NPS & CSAT

How to hire remote support agents

How to set targets and monitor performance: no. of tickets resolved, first response time, resolution time, and customer satisfaction scores

Key tools: T-Sheets, WFM software IEX, Nice IEX, Verint

When to interact with customers yourself

How to resolve conflict

How to collaborate with product development, sales, and marketing to address recurring customer issues or feedback

How to set up a reporting process & use dashboards inside Excel, PowerBI, Zoho Desk, Tableau

How to conduct sentiment analysis

How to contribute to upselling, cross-selling and referrals

When to make an offer to transfer high-interest customers to customer success teams

Why good businesses have bad reviews

How to help businesses get reviews on important platforms

What incentives to create for getting reviews

How to deal with negative reviews

Listening, empathy

How to say no politely and stick with company policies

When to extend additional benefits to customers

How to deal with claims of mis-selling or service deficiency

How to check compliance with applicable refund policies

How to incorporate these principles into emails & mock calls - with practise & mocks

How to assist an Amazon store owner

How to assist D2C businesses

How to assist a Shopify/Woocommerce store owner

Supplier management/vendor management

Order management

Logistics & inventory

Policy compliance with Amazon

Review management

Support & refunds

Common project management tools & how to use them

Overview of Asana, Jira, Basecamp, Slack, Notion

How to set projects, assign deliverables, dependencies, etc.

How to ensure discipline

Zapier and other integrations for workflow management and ops

How to use popular CRMs like Hubspot, Zoho, etc. for business automation

How to run a SCRUM process (inside and outside tech)

10 critical Excel features and functions to save time: Macros, VLookup, HLookup, Formulae, Charts, Conditional Formatting, removing duplicates, Pivot Tables, etc

How to automate and interlink multiple Excel/Google Sheets

How to integrate AI into Excel and Google Sheets: AI Excel Bot, GPT Excel, etc.

How to design a Smart Form to minimise data entry errors and make data collection more efficient

Data Profiling: Pre-entry analysis for categorisation of data

When to move out of Excel and what are the best alternatives

Overview of time-tracking tools

How to use a time-tracking tool like Hubstaff or TimeDoctor

How to measure time across projects

Project management tools

Daily, weekly and hourly reporting structures

Daily meetings & weekly check-ins

How to identify which MISes are necessary

How to identify the key metrics across business functions

How to create a daily reporting and tracking system for key metrics

How to build your first MIS

When to update an MIS

When and where are processes needed

Tools for process design - business process modelling, BPMS and SIPOCs

How to do process mapping - time taken on each step, assigning roles & responsibilities, identifying loopholes and gaps

How to measure the effectiveness of a process, conduct audits

How to improve processes through continuous improvement

How to do Failure Mode Effect analysis

How to differentiate training gaps from process gaps

How to ensure process compliance

What to do when people follow processes without applying their brain

How to create a hiring forecast

How to create a 7-day, 30-day and 90 day onboarding plan for ops and support staff

How to deal with agent non-performance

Which behaviour to incentivise & how to create the right incentives

Knowledge management in ops

How to create a self-service helpdesk for customers and use it for training agents

How to create a Wiki in Notion

How to prepare score-card/metrics for team members

How to create trainings & mocks for voice process

How to create a playbook

How to integrate data across tools to understand customer satisfaction

Tools & surveys for customer feedback

Sentiment analysis with AI tools

How to arrive at the Net Promoter Score

How to improve Customer Satisfaction Scores

How NPS & CSAT can be manipulated

Which metrics to use

How to create referral metrics

Value stream mapping (VSM) and process mapping

Using project management tools to measure wastage

Scrum & Agile framework

Managing multiple projects and priorities

How to create efficient communication pathways

How to automate repetitive/ routine tasks (such as unwanted queries)