Customer Service and Customer Experience are the two most prominent topics discussed as part of the business transformation initiatives. Invariable, these two words are used inter-changed regularly.
Do customer service and customer experience mean the same? Can it be used interchangeably? Well, there is a lot of confusion and most would not pay attention to the read the definitions of it.
Customer Service can be defined as assistance, advice, and support provided by an organization to the customer while they are interacting with the product/service. A business provides service to its customer before, during, and after buying the products. For example – when we are buying a car, a salesperson will greet you, ask about your requirements, show you the car, help you with a test ride, and also complete the buying formalities. When it is time to service your car, the dealership will provide the oil change and other services.
Customer Experience is the holistic perception created by the customer while interacting with a brand, its product, and its support. Mainly it is the perception that is built by the customer at every stage of touch-point like awareness, advocacy, purchasing, usage, and after service.
For example – most of us have subscribed to a Netflix service. Can you recall your journey as a Netflix customer? We conveniently find information about Netflix on their website. We subscribe to its service through a very easy interface. It is very simple to log in to the Netflix account on a TV or any other device. It provides a seamless experience on any device – TV, mobile, laptop, and tablet. There is no restriction of the geographical location (house, friends’ house, airport, train, etc.) unless it is blocked for some reason. Plus, the monthly subscription is deducted from your bank account. We don’t subscribe to Netflix to watch movies. Instead, we buy the experience of watching TV as per our convenience and comfort.
Having said this, customer service is also an important part of our engagement with the customer. But customer service is just a small part of the overall customer experience.
Why is Customer Experience important?
According to a PWC survey, one in three customers will leave a brand because of one bad experience and while 2/3 will completely abandon a company with multiple bad experiences.
For today’s digitally literate customer speed, accuracy, convenience, and user-friendly interaction via all the available channels is the key. Any disturbance or imbalance in the experience in any of these delivery channels will directly result in doubting the organization’s creditability. Imagine a situation where is a customer is searching for troubleshooting an issue related to a product on Google and there is no relevant information listed in the search result. You might have a call center with expert agents to assist your customer. But the digitally literate customer expects to solve the problem on his/her own without having to reach out to the call center.
According to a SuperOffice survey, 45.9% of business has customer experience as the top priority for the next five years. As digitalization progresses, most organizations are starting to realize that if they focus on customer experience it will directly result in reducing churn rate and increased revenue.
Why should organizations invest in customer experience?
Jeff Bezos said “If you do build a good experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is powerful.”
A good customer experience will help the organizations in the following two ways:
- To enhance customer perception about the product
- To improve the customer retention rate
When we talk of customer experience, most people associate it with using cutting-edge technology and think about providing good mobile and web applications. An organization could invest in the new user-interface and cutting-edge platform. But if they don’t change their legacy business processes to the new digital age, then it is just a waste of this cutting-edge technology.
Technology is an important aspect but the organization’s people and processes play a major role. It is important to reimagine the entire journey of the customer’s interaction with our product. Automating the manual operations and providing the employees with better technology and information will help them in serving better. Changing the decade-old processes and operations will help the organization to become agile and adapt to the changing business environment.
Conclusion
In today’s digital age, customers have so many options to choose from. One bad experience and the customer might never return to you again. Providing the seamless Omni-channel experience it important than the multiple-channel disjoint experience.
It is important to understand the fundamental difference between customer service and customer experience. Customer service is what you offer to your customer. But customer experience is about how the customer interacts with your product and builds their perception.
A customer with a positive experience is far more beneficial than a customer who is just satisfied.
Great content! Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the comments. I appreciate it.