There is a difference between customer service and client experience, and in this article, we are going to discuss the distinctions between the two. Imagine that you drop into a cafe where nobody seems to be interested in you. The waiter doesn’t come up to your table for more than 10 minutes. You order your food including a warm sandwich – and when you get it - it is cold. Besides, this is not exactly what you wanted as some of the dishes are not served at all for some reason. Will you be happy? Will you tip the waiter? Will you come to this place again?
The matter is that in this case you received customer service but your client experience was very poor. As customers, we always choose locations where customer experience is great. We want to be warmly greeted; we want the staff to be friendly with us, knowledgeable, welcoming, offering help and assistance. Great consumer experience is what ultimately makes us return to a certain place, and turning us into loyal clients.
To cut the long story short, in the case of thinking only about customer service the employees are primarily interested in completing their tasks as easy for them as possible – and that is it. They don’t think of the clients. Such employees often look forced – they behave if they’d rather be at some other place. Instead of providing excellent services, they surf the net, chat with friends or read.
Customer experience is – seeing larger picture
Customer experience implies seeing the bigger picture. You are not focused on a single transaction – you think of the future. Employees who want to provide exceptional client experience are interested in self-improvement and understand how important their job is. It’s not about only taking clients’ money. Companies that think of customer experience caring for the entire process of interaction, they want to know what clients think and do their best to get feedbacks and to provide best client experience.
What should you pay attention to if you want to focus on consumer experience? First of all, educate your employees properly. They have to greet customers, treat them with respect and be always helpful. Excellent customer experience requires it all - a great website with good design, clear signs in a shop and employees who are focused on something more than simply on each single transaction.
Customers always feel if employees are concentrated on a single transaction rather than on delivery of client experience. What indicates that? The absence of attention, unfriendly staff, dirty shop or a poorly designed website. All of this elements influence the customer’s perception of the brand and customer’s experience.
Client experience is neither very challenging nor costly. In fact, it can be achieved with minimal additional investments, and in the long run, it will bring much higher revenues. Customer experience requires proper training of company’s employees. Reward those employees who manage to provide consumer service at the high level. Keep your shop tidy and well-arranged, analyse your website and instruct your staff how they shall act in various situations.
Larger improvements can sometimes be required as well. It depends on each particular situation. The most efficient strategies depend on the case you are dealing with. But the general the idea is to make the client be in the focus of all what you do. The approach of your employees has to be customer-oriented. Treat your team with great respect and they will do the same with your buyers.
Knowing the difference between customer service and consumer experience is highly critical. As a person who runs a company or a client service representative who is permanently in touch with clients, you should possess this knowledge and the skill of providing exceptional customer experience. Good client experience will make clients come back; it will help any brand to stand out and will have the considerable influence on business results and career development of its team.
For further details please visit the respective section on our page on customer experience courses.