What’s the difference between Customer Service and Customer Experience?

While they are related, they are very distinct concepts. Both are important for any business and play a vital role in ensuring customer satisfaction and retention.

Customer service refers to the assistance and support provided to customers before, during, and after a purchase. It includes handling complaints, providing technical support, answering questions, and resolving issues. The goal of customer service is to ensure that customers are satisfied with the service they have received and that any issues are resolved quickly and efficiently.

On the other hand, customer experience refers to the overall perception of a customer in relation to a company, product, or service. It encompasses every interaction a customer has with a company, including customer service, as well as the design and functionality of a product or service, the ease of use, and the overall satisfaction with the experience. The goal of customer experience is to create a positive, memorable and delightful experience for the customer at every touchpoint.

When Tony Hsieh from Zappos said: “CS Shouldn’t just be a department, it should be the entire company” what he meant was that every department in the company should be focused on creating a happy Customer Experience.

While customer service is an important aspect of customer experience, it is just one piece of the puzzle. A great customer experience also includes things like ease of use, design, and overall satisfaction with the product or service. A company that focuses on customer service but neglects other elements of the customer experience may still struggle to retain customers and generate repeat business. It is vital to train and instill the importance of receiving, responding well to, and sharing customer feedback in the Customer Service team. If they don’t handle feedback and complaints well, it will affect your customer happiness levels which will affect your customer repurchase and referral rates. This is huge! The other departments in your company like marketing and product research/development need to pay close attention to the feedback coming to the Customer Service team as well as doing their own User Research so that the pain points the customers are experiencing are being relieved, repaired, and improved.

In summary, customer service and customer experience are both important for any business, but customer service is more about resolving specific issues, while customer experience is about creating a positive overall perception of a company, product, or service. A company that focuses on both customer service and customer experience, making sure all of the teams are working together to improve the Customer Happiness level, will be likely to retain customers and generate repeat business.