Customer Experience versus Customer Service: What Does Your Small Business Need?

The marketing world is chock-full of buzzy slogans, terms, and cliches. Two that you’ve certainly heard of before are “customer experience” and “customer service”, both describing concepts that are deceptively similar, but qualitatively unique in different ways. Read on to find out what is meant by customer experience and service, how these two principles interact with each other, and what tools you need to guarantee your brand has both.

Customer experience: The first impression

In the simplest terms, the customer experience (frequently abbreviated as CX) is the manner in which customers engage with a brand and their impression of the process. Good CX, as emphasized by McKinsey, is inherently customer-centric; when someone interacts with a brand, they’re seeking a resolution of some kind. That can come in the form of information, a purchase, or solving an issue that they have.
 
The best customer experiences are therefore modeled after journeys, with accessible starting points like visible sign up forms, or aesthetically-pleasing information pages, and easily-followed steps that come after, like email follow-ups, that lead the customer to what they wanted from your brand with ease.
 
Part of the customer experience, of course, is the interaction that customers have with a brand’s ambassadors. When help is needed for any reason, a brand is there to provide customer service.

Customer service: The icing on the cake

Investopedia provides a succinct description of customer service as the means by which a customer is guaranteed satisfaction with a brand and its products. At any time during the customer experience, clear pathways for customers to follow in the event that they need extra assistance allow brands to provide the help their customers and solidify their brand as reliable and enjoyable to engage with.
 
Customer experience management relies on positive customer service interactions at its core. However, it can be difficult, or seemingly impossible, to meet the needs of every customer that has a question, especially when the solution to their problem might already be available without the need for human intervention.
 
This is where marketing automation software can serve as the backbone to a stellar brand image, in the form of intelligent customer service solutions that meet your customer’s needs before they pick up the phone.
 
All-inclusive and intuitive customer relationship management software (abbreviated as CRMs) contain smart tools like email automation, customer service request management, and intelligent features that can alert you to customer issues that may require further escalation.
 
Basically, it’s putting your customer experience and service on autopilot, freeing up your time to attend to the issues your customers actually need your help with. It’s the way business will be done in the future; so why not join the wave now?