A great customer experience is important in all industries, but in a world of ever-growing consumer expectations, it's critical for retailers. In fact, according to Forrester, "the key to successful retailing in 2018 is obsessing about customer experience." Many retailers are already "obsessed" with the customer experience, but the question is: are they acting upon this obsession?
https://www.retailcustomerexperience.com/blogs/whats-in-store-for-cx-integrating-insight-for-a-360-degree-view-of-the-customer/
Is customer service part of the customer experience? Or is customer experience what happens when someone receives customer service? Are they the same thing?
The terms “customer service” and “customer experience” are often confused or used interchangeably. They’re not the same thing, but they are related.
The difference between customer service and customer experience is that while customer service is one piece of the puzzle — focused on human interaction and directly supporting customers — customer experience is the sum of the entire customer journey with your business.
Let’s take a look at customer service vs. customer experience in more detail.
https://www.helpscout.net/blog/customer-service-vs-customer-experience/
It might seem like a good idea to use email to resolve customer issues or to simply solve customer issues wherever they find you. It’s simple. It’s cost-saving. But you know what else it is? Messy and risky. Messy, because your communications with customers are all over the place. There’s not a single, unified platform to manage your customers. Risky, because you can easily overlook customers’ messages from email. While it may be unintentional, you are more likely to neglect your customer issues and lose them, which isn’t exactly good for business. Enter customer service software.
https://mopinion.com/best-customer-service-software/
Though 80% of senior decision makers in the UK rate their customer service as ‘excellent’, their customers aren’t feeling quite the same. Our report ‘The Good, The Bot and The Customer Experience’ found there is a significant disconnect between what customers expect and what brands think they are delivering.
In fact, a whopping 91% of UK consumers say they have been left feeling frustrated by the customer service they receive, with top grievances including being left on hold too long and needing to repeat their issue multiple times.
https://www.marketingtechnews.net/news/2020/jan/13/why-despite-hype-ai-could-be-failing-your-customer-strategy/
Great customer service experiences are few and far between, so when you have a good one, it makes a serious impression. Today, most companies don’t let their customers connect, hear a live voice -- a positive one, at that -- and build loyalty to the brand. An interaction with customer service is often the first step toward alienation, not bonding. But for brands that do it right, the contact makes a different kind of impact -- a good one.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/09/20/why-great-customer-service-is-key-to-a-positive-brand-reputation/
October was National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM) and the epic Equifax breach serves as just one reminder of the frequent and rising cyber risks and hacking incidents. For customer service organizations, managing the exponential growth of customer data across multiple customer communication channels and platforms is not easy.
http://customerthink.com/why-the-highest-compliance-should-be-your-baseline-for-customer-service-messaging/
For the last few weeks, I’ve been sharing some memories from my past running a call center and some of the ways in which I have observed customer service has changed. The first installment touched on how customer service was considered a necessary evil of doing business in the past. Last week, I explored how measuring the performance of customer service has evolved. The theme throughout each of these was that if your customer service was still mired in some of these past practices and conceptions, you’re doing it wrong.
https://www.business2community.com/customer-experience/youre-wrong-new-customer-service-philosophies-02025456/
Last week, I shared how early on in my career I managed a technical support and customer service center and service was considered a cost center and a necessary evil. How times have changed, and how far most companies have come in changing that perception!
Continuing in that vein, this week I will share our different approach to measuring customer service at that time, and how there are better means of gauging various aspects of service today. (Note: I’m limiting this to live interactions because my time running a service center only saw the beginnings of self-service.)
I’m going to organize this around points in the typical customer service process:
https://customerthink.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-what-to-measure-in-customer-service/
