Difference Between Customer Service and Customer Experience (with Comparison Chart)

In the business world, customers are given topmost priority. If the customer is happy and satisfied with your offering, it can do miracles for your business. Customer service is all about the customer’s interaction with the company’s executive at the time of seeking assistance, concerning the company’s product or service.

It is often contrasted with the word ‘customer experience’, which is a broader concept, in comparison to customer service. Customer Experience is about analysing how the customer is feeling or what he/she perceives when they deal with the brand at different stages of the customer life cycle.

Basically, customer experience is an umbrella term which includes customer service. Now, we are going to discuss the differences between customer service and customer experience.

Content: Customer Service Vs Customer Experience

Comparison Chart
Definition
Key Differences
Conclusion

Comparison Chart

Basis for Comparison	Customer Service	Customer Experience
Meaning	Customer Service refers to the advice or support offered by the firm, to the customers, who buy or use their products or services.	Customer Experience is a combination of customer's perception, feelings and the overall impression of the brand.
Nature	Reactive	Proactive
Orientation	Problem-Oriented	Feeling-Oriented
Objective	To resolve customer's issues and provide immediate solutions.	To provide an ideal experience to the customers at every stage of their interaction.
Focuses on	Communication and providing solutions to customers complaints and grievances.	Overall impression left on the customer's mind, whenever they interact with the brand.
Responsibility	Customer Service Team	Organization
Results in	Customer Retention and Loyalty	Development of brand value among customers

Definition of Customer Service

Customer Service refers to the systematic process of taking good care of all the customer’s needs, and grievances, by offering and rendering professional, high quality, timely assistance, information and advice – before, during and after making the sale, with an aim of creating reliability and trust.

When a customer seeks support services, he/she comes in one to one communication with the company’s representative. Providing good customer service is as important as providing good products because that is the only way of retaining customers and growing business in the long run, as it leads to consumer satisfaction and promotes repetitive sales.

Ideal customer service requires timely and satisfactorily resolving the issues and queries raised by the customers. Moreover, the process should be easy and convenient, i.e. it should not be a multi-step process, rather the single-step process is preferred.

It is not just confined to telephone support service, rather nowadays big brands are providing customer service online, i.e. email, web, WhatsApp, online chat, social media, and so forth. Every organization which strives for delivering good customer service often invests in training their employees, and looks for customer reviews, for improving it further.

Definition of Customer Experience

Customer Experience can be understood as the impression which the company leaves in the minds of the customer, i.e. how and what they perceive about your brand, what you stand for and what are you known for among the customers.

It is a sum of one-off or multiple interactions with the company’s products, representatives, systems, processes, channels etc. In finer terms, it is what happens when the customer engages or deals with the brand.

The customer’s interaction with the brand is a mix of three components – the customer’s journey, touchpoints (company’s representatives with whom the customer interacts) and the environment (digital or physical). Customer Experience is regarded as one of the brand differentiator, which results in gaining or losing customers.

Customer Experience plays a crucial role in the sustained growth of the business. Good Customer Experience often leads to brand loyalty, customer retention, word of mouth marketing and positive customer feedback or reviews and recommendations online.

It covers everything from product quality to product innovation, pricing to packaging, navigating website/app to talking to the representative, time of delivery to ease of use and many more.

Key Differences Between Customer Service and Customer Experience

Upcoming points will explain to you the difference between customer service and customer experience:

Customer Service can be defined as the help, support and advice rendered by the company, to the customers before and after buying/using its product and services, so that they have a good experience. Conversely, Customer Experience refers to the overall interaction which a customer has with the brand, at different stages of the customer journey.
Customer service is reactive in nature in the sense that it comes into the picture when the customer has some issues or he/she is dissatisfied with the company’s product or service. As against, Customer Experience is proactive because a firm takes all the steps to optimize its target audience’s journey, so as to avoid the chances of dissatisfaction.
Customer service is problem-oriented in the sense that it is often sought when the customer needs advice or assistance. As against, customer experience is feeling-oriented as it reflects what customers feel or thinks about the brand.
Customer Service aims at responding to all the questions and issues, which a customer have, timely and effectively. On the contrary, Customer Experience is all about providing an ideal experience to the customers at various stages of customer’s interaction during his/her course of the journey.
Customer Service focuses on communication and providing solutions to customers complaints, troubleshooting after buying and grievances. Contrarily, customer experience focuses on the overall impression left on the customer’s mind, whenever they interact with the brand.
Providing good customer service is the responsibility of the customer service team or department. In contrast, providing good customer experience is the responsibility of the firm.
Ideal customer service results in customer retention and loyalty, whereas an ideal customer experience can result in the sustained growth of the company’s business and development of brand value.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, customer experience is holistic, in the sense that it covers everything which increases customer satisfaction, resulting in the improvement and advancement of organizational processes. As against, customer service indicates a service rendered by the company to its customers, with respect to handling and resolving their queries, questions, complaints and grievances.