Customer Service Vs customer experience are often used interchangeably – but, is that correct? This post is going to be going through some of the biggest differences between customer experience and customer service. (If you would like to learn how this relates to growing an engineering services company – always happy to schedule a chat.)
The first key thing to understand is the difference of customer service vs customer experience – customer service is part of a holistic customer experience, customer service usually refers to a support function within a business. It refers to an event that’s been raised by a customer, and the company’s response to that event, the manner in which your company then responds to that event is termed customer service, the customer service side of the business is usually looked after by one or two parts of the business. And these are typically customer-facing roles, such as in the contact center or in physical stores.
Customer experience refers to an entire customer journey, referring to every single point where a customer interacts with the brand, either directly or indirectly. Naturally, it involves many different departments across the company, these departments could include sales, marketing, customer service, quality control web development, etc, the list goes on.
The second key difference between customer service and customer experience is that customer service is reactive, whereas customer experience is proactive. So when we talk about customer service being reactive. What we mean is the customer is usually the first person to initiate the conversation. There are lots of reasons why this might be the case, but typically people reach out to customer services teams, when they need support or when they have a problem that needs resolving.
On the other hand, customer experience is much more proactive rather than waiting for a customer to initiate a conversation customer experience is all about anticipating your customer’s future wants and needs. The idea is that you can improve your customers’ experiences, without having to be prompted. So you can improve your customer experience through anything from improving functionality on your website to surprising and delighting customers in a shop.
Another key difference is that customer service is often isolated. Customer service is usually needed, although not always after a purchase has been made, and it refers to a specific event that has been raised by a customer, this could be anything from needing support or help with changing those details on their account, so making a complaint against the company are also a customer service interaction – usually focuses around an isolated event. So not every customer might need customer services help once they become a customer, but it’s absolutely vital for those who do.
On the other hand customer experience is about the relationship between the brand and the customer and can’t be pinned down to a specific event, so it involves everybody who comes into contact with the brand, whether they’re a prospect or a customer.
To summarise, customer service is quantifiable and is to do with an event – customer experience is about the relationship between the brand and the customer continually. So, which is more important. Well, both are as important as each other as I said, customer service forms part of a good customer experience. So you simply can’t have one without the other. Both are absolutely vital to the long term success of your business.
If you would like more information on how you can improve customer service in your Engineering service company, please see our website for more information.