Customer Experience and Why You Should Care as an Entrepreneur -Part 1
What is customer experience? Differentiating between customer service, customer success and customer experience.
Customer experience
Customer service
Customer success
These are all customer-focused terms used interchangeably and in this short article, I attempt to differentiate these terms while highlighting the importance of positive customer experience to a business.
Customer service
Simply refers to the assistance, advice or professional help given to the customer before, during or after the purchase of a product or service. In customer service, businesses provide channels where customers reach out if they need anything. It is a reactive fulfillment of customer needs and ends when the customer needs have been satisfied.
Customer success
This is when customers derive the desired value from using a product or service. You basically hold your customers’ hand and walk them through your product or service until they achieve the goal for which they made a purchase. In customer success, the business takes a proactive stand in helping its customers navigate the product throughout the entire customer journey. Customer success has no endpoint and continues as long as the customer remains a customer.
Customer experience
This is more encompassing as it relates to the overall impression a customer has while using a product or service. It includes what customers think of the brand, the support, even the performance of the product/service across every stage of the customer journey. Customer experience touches on how well the business measures up to the expectation of the customer.
Customer experience combines both customer service and customer success. Great customer experience is interactive which enables the customer to enjoy the whole end-to-end experience.
Customer experience is a combined effort of teams across the company and should be a strong focal point as it can single-handedly make or mar your company.
The next part of this series will touch on the various ways positive customer experience can benefit a company.
