Customer Service vs. Customer Experience

In the competitive business landscape, exemplary customer service and seamless customer experiences have never been more important. They have emerged as critical pillars for businesses striving to differentiate themselves and cultivate enduring relationships with their clientele. In this article, we'll delve into the fundamentals of both, exploring their definitions, key principles, and their pivotal role in shaping sustainable success.

What is customer service?

Customer service is at the heart of any business. At its core, it focuses on assisting and guiding customers in every aspect of the customer experience, whether that be providing information and troubleshooting technical issues or handling inquiries and processing transactions. It is a tool to connect businesses to customers and foster trust and loyalty for a brand through exceptional services. It's not just about resolving complaints or fulfilling requests; it's about creating meaningful connections and leaving positive impressions even after customer interaction ends. 

There are various ways to implement customer service, whether through human agents or self-service options like chatbots, a knowledge base, or virtual assistants. Effective customer service is also multichannel and can operate through phone calls, live chat, emails, social media, and more to meet customers' diverse needs and preferences. Customer service should also be fast and able to respond to inquiries and issues in a detailed and effective manner.

What is customer experience?

Customer experience (CX) encapsulates a customer's interaction with a brand, from the initial point of contact to long-term engagement. It also focuses on how customers feel about these interactions and is the sum of every touchpoint, impression, and emotion throughout this journey. Unlike customer service, which focuses more on individual interactions, customer experience captures the entirety of a customer's relationship with a brand. It revolves around the customer's perspective, like their needs, wants, and expectations. 

Effective customer experience requires cross-functional collaboration, alignment with brand values, and a continuous commitment to delivering exceptional experiences. It involves understanding customer needs, preferences, and pain points at each touchpoint, whether marketing, sales, product usage, or support. It's about creating positive and memorable encounters that resonate with customers after the transaction is completed. Every interaction contributes to the brand's overall perception and shapes customer loyalty. It is important to remember that customer experience is not static and is constantly changing and evolving as technological advancements, shifting consumer behaviors, market trends, and more influence customers.

Key differences between customer service and customer experience

Customer service and customer experience may seem like two sides of the same coin, but they have three key differences businesses must understand.

Level of control

Customer service typically operates reactively, addressing customer inquiries, complaints, and support requests as they surface. This approach offers immediate and transactional control, focusing on resolving issues on a case-by-case basis while aiming to uphold operational efficiency. It concentrates on managing individual interactions rather than shaping the overall customer experience.

On the other hand, customer experience is harder to control as many factors and interactions impact how a customer perceives a brand. Businesses prioritizing customer experience strategies prioritize anticipating customer needs, preferences, and pain points at every engagement stage. This proactive approach aims to deliver consistent, seamless experiences that resonate with customers. Achieving this requires greater control, a thorough understanding of customer behavior, data-driven insights, and collaborative efforts across different departments to align processes, systems, and organizational culture.

Metrics

In customer service, the metrics typically revolve around efficiency and effectiveness in resolving individual customer issues. To track this, businesses use metrics like customer effort scores (CES), customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), and net promoter scores (NPS). These metrics are crucial for evaluating the operational performance of customer service teams and ensuring timely support delivery. 

Customer experience uses broader metrics to create a holistic picture of the customer experience and brand perception. In addition to the metrics mentioned for customer service, customer experience metrics include customer lifetime value (CLV), customer retention rate, and customer churn rate. These metrics help to show the long-term impact of customer experiences on profitability.

Ownership

Customer service typically falls under the purview of the support team, which includes agents and customer support managers. They are tasked with handling customer inquiries, complaints, and requests promptly and satisfactorily. While other departments may collaborate with customer service teams to gather feedback or provide input, the support team has the primary responsibility of effective customer service operations and outcomes. 

Ownership of customer experience extends across multiple departments within a company, including marketing, sales, product development, and customer service. Each department shapes different aspects of the customer journey, from initial engagement and purchase to ongoing support and retention efforts. Successful customer experiences require a company-wide commitment to prioritizing the customer at every touchpoint.

Customer service management vs. customer experience in the journey

As customers learn more about a brand and make decisions, they will encounter various stages shaping their overall experience and perception. Understanding how customer service and customer experience interact in these different stages is important for businesses that want to leave a lasting impression. Customer journey mapping is a tool that helps businesses gain insight into the touchpoints and interactions customers encounter throughout their journey. It is also a helpful tool for seeing how customer service and customer experience intersect and diverge. Explaining the connections and disconnects between customer service and customer experience in the journey helps map the marketing funnel from awareness to loyalty. 

Awareness

During the awareness stage, individuals encounter the brand for the first time, whether through marketing efforts, word-of-mouth recommendations, or online searches. At this stage, customer experience comes into play by crafting initial impressions to resonate with potential customers. This entails ensuring brand messaging is clear and consistent across various channels, from social media to digital advertisements. While customer service may not be actively engaged during this phase, its role remains important in laying the groundwork for positive interactions in the future.

Consideration

The consideration phase involves people moving beyond initial awareness to evaluate their options. Customer experiences come into play here and focus on providing valuable information, personalized recommendations, and engaging content that meets the needs and preferences of potential customers. Individuals weigh the pros and cons of the brand's features, offerings, and benefits during this stage, meaning customer service may come into play if customers seek clarification or assistance in their decision-making. 

Purchase

The purchase stage is when customers move closer to a buying decision. This is the stage where customer service is important, as customers may have questions or encounter issues while completing a transaction. Whether it's assistance with navigating the website, clarifying product details, or addressing payment concerns, customer service is there to provide timely and helpful support. Customer experience is also important during this stage as it helps guide customers through the transaction process and ensure seamless and satisfying purchasing experiences. 

Loyalty

After customers purchase and progress through the journey, the focus is on fostering loyalty and advocacy. Customer experience plays an important role in this stage in fostering positive relationships to keep customers coming back with personalized communication, exclusive offers, and ongoing support to reinforce the connection between the brand and customers. By delivering consistent and exceptional experiences, businesses can encourage loyalty and advocacy, turning satisfied customers into brand ambassadors who champion the brand to others. Customer service helps answer any lingering questions, further enhancing this loyalty as customers will know they can rely on brands to answer their inquiries and issues. 

What to know

Both customer service management and customer experience aim to fulfill a few of the same objectives:

• Automation: They both aim to automate common omnichannel tasks that allow customer feedback to go to the right team members and facilitate the service or issue to move forward.

• Use of a CRM: In both circumstances, a type of CRM may be used for customer relationship management. This helps both new customers and existing customers with routing to the proper team members in real-time. And keeps a defined log of what occurred for that particular customer.

• Utilization of Customer Data: In both customer service management and improving customer experience, the use of customer information (or customer data) may be used in the customer service management strategy. This is to address the business needs of the customer and manage customer expectations on the outcome.

• Customer Requests: Technically, both are managing customer requests. From onboarding issues to pricing questions to handling incidents. Both are frontline good customer service mechanisms for businesses.