Customer Service vs Customer Experience: Explained

Customer experience is everything to a business nowadays. If you are wondering about the monetary value of improving the customer experience, then consider this.

You can charge a 16% premium on products and services and gain increased loyalty from customers if you make them feel appreciated, a recent survey by PWC says. This makes it seem worth the effort, indeed.

In this article, we will chat about the difference between customer service vs customer experience and how the lines nowadays are quite blurred. So keep reading!

What Is Customer Service?

Customer service is when you assist your customers throughout the purchase process. This means before, during, and after it.

This is done so you can make the purchasing process easier. And make it more likely that the customer will complete the purchase, without abandoning the cart or giving up halfway and walking out of the retail store. 

Most businesses nowadays offer customer service through live human agents. That's great, but we will discuss below how you can use chatbots to offer great customer service as well. Retail grocery stores nowadays or big box stores also offer self-service checkout options, in which there is no human interaction at all.

There are some things to remember when trying to offer good customer service. 

Keep the interactions short and sweet: You don't want to rush the customers through the process, but you also don't want to take forever and make them late for their next appointment. Speed can be one of the most important aspects of good customer service, but most businesses fail at this one (chatbots can help). 

Empathy and kindness are essential: Your customers don't want to feel like they are just a number in your database or like you only care about them because of this one sale. That's why being empathetic with them and not taking anything they do personally is crucial. Good customer service agents know how to do this intuitively. 

Use all channels available: You don't want to force your customer to use a channel that they don't prefer. For example, introverts don't want to chat with someone on the phone, as it's uncomfortable and stressful for them. Offering a Whatsapp live chat option will work fabulously then. 

Chatbots for Customer Service

As you can see above, your customer service agents have a lot on their plates already. That's why Aivo offers the AI chatbot option for customer service. There are so many advantages to this.

The chatbots can take care of the mundane, boring, and repetitive customer service tasks, like checking account balances or informing about locations and hours. This way your live human agents can focus on more complex and challenging customer service tasks. 

Also, using chatbots can help keep your customer service interactions short and sweet. Your customers won't have to wait forever to chat with a live agent, as they can get their questions answered by the AI chatbot.

Since the lines aren't clogged up due to all the easy customer service calls, the customers who have more important, dire, and urgent tasks can get attended to faster. This should reduce complaints and annoyances among your customers greatly.

AI chatbots can work on the different channels you can think of, like Whatsapp Business, Instagram, website, Facebook, or more. That means your customers can get served in the manner that they want and choose. 

Related Article: What Is the Difference Between Conversational AI and a Chatbot?

What Is Customer Experience?

Customer service is one narrow aspect of the full customer experience. When you think of customer experience, you are thinking about all the various ways that your customer interacts with your business, not only through customer service reps, but through marketing channels, your sales representatives, and more. 

Everyone in your business that the customers interact with should be empathetic, kind, and supportive of the customer experience. The channels that the customers pass through should work seamlessly and without any hiccups. Finally, the product should work as promised without glitches or hitches, solving the customer's problem. 

As you can see, there's a lot to take care of when it comes to your customer's experience with your business. There are so many touchpoints to take care of. So many interactions to improve on an ongoing basis.

You will forever be improving and working upon the customer experience, as long as you are in business. You can never say that you are done with it and rest on your laurels. The minute you do so, it will come tumbling down around you. 

You can improve the customer experience by looking through all the stages of the buying journey and working on incremental changes and improvements in each stage. Each business's customer journey roadmap will be different, so you will have to spend some time mapping it out first. 

Chatbots for Customer Experience

The most important thing you can do to help improve your customer experience is to automate as much of it as possible. This is because you can't possibly have customer service reps or employees engaging directly with your customer at every stage of the customer journey. Also, your customer might be interacting with your website or products at all times of day, when your customer service reps are fast asleep at home. 

Just so you don't have any gaps or moments where your customer service reps don't come through for the customer, you will want to add automation. This could be as simple as having automated messages for customers when they click on your website or message you on one of your social media channels. 

Boost Customer Experience Using Chatbots

Or it could be using a chatbot to help boost customer experience. Let's see some ways you can use a chatbot to do this.

Help with refunds: When your customers are looking to get refunded on a purchase, they don't want to wait for eons for a customer service rep to help them out. You can improve the customer experience by using chatbots to help with the refund process. 

Help with the checkout service: You could use chatbots to stay with the customer throughout the purchase process and ensure their questions are answered if any. This way they are less likely to abandon the cart and leave midway through the process. 

Gather feedback at every stage of the journey: How will you know if your customers have a good or bad customer experience with your business? Use chatbots to gather feedback using simple one-question surveys with the option to add detailed comments. This way you will never have to wonder about this again.

Offer 24/7 support: This is the best way to improve your customer experience. Your customers don't want to wait to receive customer service any longer. They are impatient and in a hurry to get back to their lives. 

Not only this, but they don't want to wait for any of it: questions about shipping or other details answered, refunds processed, and more. 

Use chatbots in creative ways to serve your customers and improve their overall customer experience. It's the age of artificial intelligence. So why not use chatbots and AI to your advantage? 

Related Article: 5 Benefits of Using Chatbots for Customer Experience

Difference Between Customer Service and Customer Experience

Nowadays, both customer service and customer experience are crucial to ensure your customers remain happy, even ecstatic to purchase from you. But it's difficult to draw hard lines between the two.

Yes, customer service is a smaller aspect of the full customer experience, but both work hand-in-hand to ensure that your customers stay loyal to you for a long time to come. If you don't want to stress about either one of these, then using AI chatbot options and other AI tools will become crucial in the future.

Especially as customers become pickier, want more services faster, and refuse to wait for an iota of a second. Customers consider the whole picture when thinking about your offerings. And that's why you must do the same. 

Don't let yourself get stressed thinking about this though. Go through your customer journey roadmap.

And work with your team to figure out how you can improve each aspect of the customer experience bit by bit. Industries of all kinds are using chatbots to enhance their customer experience, and so can you.

Customer Service vs Customer Experience Clarified

You are not alone on this journey. Now that you know the difference between customer service vs customer experience, Aivo can help you build a great customer experience from start to finish.

There are so many creative ways you can use AI chatbots or live chat options to provide an exceptional experience.

Why not take advantage of them all? Book a demo to implement chatbots in your business.