When it comes to caring for your customers, service and experience play a large role. Terms such as Customer Service, Customer Experience, and Customer Service Experience are often used interchangeably, however they mean different things. To know the difference and ensure that you’re enjoying the full benefits of them you need to truly understand what each one means. In this 2 part blog series we will explore the difference between customer service and customer experience, what impacts customer experience, and finally 4 tips to enjoy the full benefits of customer service and customer experience.
Customer Service
Customer service is a support function of a business. It is the assistance, support, and advice provided to a customer when they have a question or an issue concerning your product or service. It involves customer-facing departments, such as agents in your contact center, customer support teams who fix technical issues in the short term, employees in physical offices, human-powered live chats, or even automated chatbots.
Customer Experience
Customer Experience, or CX, is the result of every interaction the customer has with your business; from walking into your physical office or navigating your website to talking to customer service and receiving the product/service they bought from you. CX captures how the customer uses your product or service, their interactions with an agent or self-service support options, customer service interactions with the team, and more. Everything you do or do not do impacts your customers’ perception and their decision to either keep coming back or not.
As you can see, one is a single touchpoint with business reps who focus on human interaction and direct support of customers. The other impacts feelings, perception, emotions, and the totality of a customer’s journey with your business. Next, let’s take a look at what impacts the customer experience.
Customer experience is impacted by:
- Customer Service, which includes Customer Support, Customer Success, and self-service support.
- Your Product or Service itself
- Your brand’s touchpoints
When customers enjoy their experience with your business, you will receive:
- Increased customer satisfaction
- Increased customer loyalty
- Recommendations and Referrals
- Reduced customer complaints and returns.
According to Zendesk, 61% of customers would switch to a competitor after just one bad experience while 81% of consumers say a positive customer service experience increases the chances of them making another purchase. Business heads agree that customer experience has a positive impact on customer retention, cross-selling ability, and overall company growth.
So there you have it, customer service is not customer experience and customer service does impact the customer experience. But how do you find a happy medium and enjoy the full benefits of Customer Service and Customer Experience? Follow our blog series and join us next time as we discuss the top 4 tips to do just that.
