How Customer Service and Customer Experience Differ from Each Other

A majority of businesses focus on customer service and keep customer experience aside. That shows up when we interact with the agents from time to time. Here, it is necessary to mention that only good customer support can create a good customer experience. Both complement each other.

So, the question is what leads to what? Does customer service lead to customer experience or customer experience leads to customer service?

The fact is both are mutually related and but only customer service does not complete the picture of customer experience. Customer experience is not merely a result of customer service.

If we consider both the aspects together, it is understood that customers look for good service during and after the purchase has been made, but the inception of customer experience happens from the moment a need arises, and the customer starts thinking about a product or service that will fulfill that need.

The idea of customer experience is a cumulative thing, and it relates to every single aspect between a customer and a company, customer service stands ahead all of them. Let’s look at how customer experience and customer service are mutually related but also differ in various aspects.

Customer Service Leads to Good Customer Experience

Every company looks for ways to improve the overall customer experience, and they include new tools and technologies to improve the overall customer service. But still, things don’t change substantially if the product or service doesn’t fulfill the customer needs, aptly.

So, it is necessary to understand customer needs and then give shape to your product or services accordingly. It helps in creating an experience that is the most suitable considering the customers’ choices and inclinations.

Here, once you have designed your product or services, it becomes a lot more necessary to work on the channels of customer service and make the prospective customers understand about it. And the customer also needs after-sale support.

Now from the moment of making up a mind for a product or service to final purchase, this whole journey shapes up a complete customer experience.

According to Hubspot, to offer a great customer experience, one needs to build a customer journey map and buyer personas so that you can effectively understand and solve the challenges.

In a way, good customer experience is all about solving challenging problems of the customers with innovative ideas that fit well in the scheme of business. And the role of customer service is to understand these challenges thoroughly by customer interactions, before and after the sale.

How Customer Service Completes Customer Experience

Customer experience can’t achieve its best form if customer service lags in any of the business domain. There are several aspects that support customer experience, but the foremost is how the customers perceive a product or service on the very first chance.

It can be a possibility that an agent introduces the product or service to the customers and makes the very first perception for them.

There are many ideas that revolve around the specific needs of the individual customers, but the best ones touch the customer psyche in a different way.

For example, customer experience starts right from the moment a customer looks at the logo of the company and visualises about it being good or bad. Even this tiny moment counts in customer experience.

So, there are so many aspects that contribute to the overall customer experience. These aspects vary from business to business in terms of what exactly they want to deliver to the customers.

Customer Service Is an Assisting Factor for Customer Experience

A company cannot avoid customer service to complete the customer experience. There are various factors that help in making every point of interaction between the company and customers more worthwhile in terms of creating a promising customer experience.

According to this Forbes article written by Blake Morgan, a customer experience expert, customer service is just an advice or assistance a company gives to its customers and makes them feel that they are taken care of. This article also talks about customer experience is a sum total of all the customer interactions with the brand.

Customer Experience and Customer Service Are Different

All in all, customer experience and customer service are two different entities, and one should not keep them in the same box. 75% of customers leave because of the bad customer service. So, a bad customer service hampers the overall customer experience.

In a way, customer service is a short-term goal, and customer experience is a long-term goal that a company should work on. It is a continuous process, and a perpetual delivery of good customer service ensures a good customer experience.