Author : Vikas Kumar
Director - Customer Experience, Espire | Sitecore MVP 2021
25/Jul/2019

Vikas is a Sitecore MVP who heads the Digital Experience Platform (DXP) initiatives at Espire. A skilled craftsman in competency building, Vikas is a go-to-CMS expert, known for designing & developing best practices, that consistently transforms digital journey for clients.


How Customer Service can make or break CX for your brand

Customer experience has become the top priority for companies today as customers rank businesses on the quality of service they receive from them. Customers today are no more loyal and with abundant choice at hands they tend to shift companies given the experience they have with them. Brands are thus striving hard to be remarkable in the eyes of the consumers to deliver top-notch customer experience. Customer service is the backbone of delivering superior customer experience but the question that remains is how customer service is different from customer experience. The terms customer service and customer experience are often confused and used interchangeably.

We hereby take a look at how customer service is different from customer experience and how the two are related and complementary to each other.

What Is the Difference Between Customer Service and Customer Experience ?

The basic difference between the two is that, customer service is one aspect to deliver customer experience by interacting and supporting customers during their pre and post purchase process. Customer experience is, however, the sum-total of the entire customer journey with a business.

Customer service is the support a company provides to its customers before, during and after buying and using its products or services. It provides the customers with satisfactory and enjoyable experience with the company leading to healthy bonds and long-term relationship.

Customer experience is the total of all experiences the customer has with the business consisting of all the interactions with the company throughout the customer journey. It is used to describe the relationship a customer has with a business. It involves every conceivable touchpoint including the brand itself, its products or services and employees who are engaged in ensuring satisfying experience with the company.


Brands cannot completely ensure that customers would not face problems after purchase
of their products or service and hence customers cannot be completely satisfied.


While customer service is reactive in nature, customer experience is proactive. Customer service comes into play when dissatisfied and frustrated customer contacts the company for grievance redressal. Hence, businesses can take action only when something goes wrong with their products or services and thereby cannot offer solution before the problem arises. Customer experience on the other hand is proactive in nature as it ensures that customers face minimum or no hassles by optimizing the customer journey. The goal of customer experience is to ensure that customers need not require to contact customer service in the first place.

Customer experience is a holistic approach that includes the entire organization along with the customer service department. Customer service focuses on interactions with the customers as they try to contact the company during the stage of experiencing issues with company’s offerings, whereas, customer experience covers entire experience of the customer along their journey with the brand in order to build long term relationship and loyalty with the company.

A seamless customer service boosts customer experience

Although seemingly different from customer experience, a seamless customer service over a period of time impacts the perception of the customer about the brand. A good customer service hence will lead to improved customer experience over time and attracts customers towards the brand. Brands thus cannot ignore customer service in place of customer experience. Brands cannot completely ensure that customers would not face problems after purchase of their products or service and hence customers cannot be completely satisfied. There will always be need of a customer service in place to ensure that customers are provided exceptional customer experience and are truly satisfied with the brand to remain loyal and return for more.

All said, customer experience is much more than just customer service. It is also about ensuring employee engagement, understanding the customer, devising plans for delivering superior customer service and empowering employees to deliver on the promise. It also encompasses training the leaders to reinforce behaviors in the organization to deliver delightful experience to customers. In the end, it is about ensuring that every step in the journey of the customer is seamless and it offers exceptional experience to the customers. Customer service ensures that your customers are taken care of during their periods of grievances and customer experience is all about discovering and acting on such areas of opportunity that attracts and keeps the customers connected with the brand.

Espire's Digital Experience Platform (DXP) solutions are transforming websites into powerful customer engagement and conversion platforms and empowering marketers with the ability to engage with the hyper-connected, on-the-go customers of today in a more meaningful, highly personalized and contextual manner, seamlessly across all brand touchpoints - globally and locally.

MORE FROM OUR BLOGS

Delivering Consistent And Compelling Customer Communication With Self Serve Communication Portal

Delivering Consistent And Compelling Customer Communication With Self Serve Communication Portal

Supporting & Building Digital Solutions for Improving Customer Experience

Espire upgraded their existing corporate website to Sitecore version 9.1 for streamlining navigation issues, upgraded their E-commerce platform for delivering personalized customer experiences, deployed Sitecore technical enhancements to improve development process like refactoring, Unicorn, Glass mapper and T4templates, Search etc

A Leading Offender Management Software Solution Provider Gains the Competitive Edge of Agility

The client is a leading provider of offender management product, catering to the Governments sector mainly to Canada, USA and UK. With the aim of becoming agile by automating the internal processes and modernizing the systems, the client decided to develop an application to assess their end-client’s business process environment.

Powering Digital Transformation by revamping Quote & Buy process for a UK based leading Insurance company

Espire enhanced the existing Digital Transformation Journey using Umbraco CMS,Designed and implemented Umbraco based system for content management of the forms and modules

Optimized data and content management with Azure-based solutions for a leading Singapore-headquartered transshipment hub

The customer's existing website was deployed on-premises and leveraged a WCM platform, Joomla. They required a strategic technology partner to carry out Azure migration and eliminate on-premise hosting environment. They also needed managed support services for monitoring website up-time and efficient incident management.

A Complete guide to upgrade to sitecore xm cloud why when and how

Sitecore XM Cloud's composable architecture allows organizations to create and manage personalized digital experiences for their customers, increasing engagement and conversions. With its cloud-based delivery model, Sitecore XM Cloud eliminates the need for organizations to maintain on-premises infrastructure, providing a cost-effective and secure solution for managing digital customer experiences

Leveraging composable architecture to drive unforgettable digital experiences

A composable architecture allows the application to adapt to the speed of business while enhancing responsiveness and scalability, paving the way towards driving greater business growth. In our latest blog, we share the benefits of leveraging a composable microservices-led architecture for business applications.

Top 10 strategic technology trends for 2023 by gartner Part2

In our first blog on Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2023 by Gartner, we had discussed the top 5 technology trends that will enable businesses to offer customized experiences to the end users for better engagement, ROI, conversion, and sales. As a concluding part of this 2 series blog, we will enlist and discuss the next 5 disruptive tech trends to be witnessed in 2023 such as Wireless value realization, Superapps, Adaptive AI, Metaverse and Sustainable technology.

Top 10 strategic technology trends for 2023 by gartner Part1

The pace of change is accelerating, driven by emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, big data and blockchain-all of which are changing how we work, live, and manage our businesses. In this blog, Part 1 of the top 10 strategic technology trends for 2023, we will be exploring the top 5 trends identified by Gartner, which can significantly contribute to your success story.

Agile tech solutions and agile mindset foundation of future ready and resilient businesses

The Agile technologies help employees become self-sufficient and motivated to work more collaboratively & deliver ROI-driven solutions while eliminating the constant need for supervision and micro-management to achieve goals.

Subscribe To Our Blog

By clicking on "SUBSCRIBE NOW" you acknowledge having read our Privacy Notice.

global-locations

12

+

Global Locations

global-services

100

+

Global Customers Served

resources-certified

1200

+

Resources

technology-partnerships

30

+

Technology Partnerships

years-of-experience

20

+

Years of Experience in Digital Transformation & Total Experience

Speak to Our Digital Transformation Specialists

Let's get you started on the digital-first & transformation journey. Reserve your free consultation or a demo today!