Customer Experience vs Customer Service

'People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.' Maya Angelou

Customer experience (CX) refers to the shopping experience solely from the customer's personal perspective. Planning for superior customer experience requires empathic imagination of everything Jane sees, hears, etc after each click and how it interacts with her most basic individual human needs, including those not directly related to your product.

Even if you are selling and discussing car tires, Jane's ostensibly unrelated personal needs persist. For instance, among other things, she has ongoing social needs to be validated. So while recalling her name and personal preferences do not appear related to tires, you are more likely to win her over by considering them every step of the way. All her needs must be addressed to view her holistically. 

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Customer experience is proactive. It involves meticulous planning that avoids customer discomfort. Conversely, customer service is overall more reactive because it is concerned with fixing problems related to poor customer experiences, after they happen. In fact, it is quite possible to have excellent customer service despite poor overall customer experience. For instance, if you fail to meet a customer's ongoing need for convenience by dragging out a process into something difficult, the customer may suffer lingering frustration associated with boring tedium and wasted time but satisfied by how your customer service rep resolved her specific problem. 

Achieving superior customer experience involves planning to make that process easier and to avoid the problem in the first place. For instance, after imagining Jane's experience, and even before she enters, you decide to use the right infrastructure like apps to eliminate otherwise tedious steps. Customer experience mapping can help you to identify where (potential) problems lie. It involves looking at all the stages of the buying cycle, ie from 'stimulus to ZMOT to first moment of truth to second moment of truth'.

Jane couldn't careless about her stage in your 'sales funnels'. Just like you, she is selfishly living in a bubble of her personal needs in which she does everything possible to meet them. You must step away from narrowly focusing on 'converting' her from visitor to lead at x% to prospect and then to customer at x% ... so she could buy, ... so you could meet your personal needs. To her, she's just Jane. Not only should you carefully examine your processes through which Jane goes but also those who serve her, ie your 'internal customers' aka employees whose processes should also be streamlined to avoid internal friction and confusion. See how McDonalds masters this on the backend.

No need pretending why you are in business with the usual disingenuous, creepy tactics though. However, if you can just treat her as Jane as a holistic individual while keeping all your market promotions stuff strategically woven to apparent invisibility, you may meet your needs marvelously. 

So before Jane comes in the next time, prepare. You do not just sell her tires. Letting her see your humanity, prepare to use her data (from data mining) to also sell her personal validation, convenience, understanding, expert knowledge, non-jarring interface, occasional surprise little bonuses (aka a 'plus one' product or service) and whatever you know she values. By using data of her shopping history and preferences, you can also make personalized
recommendations of new products and upsells.

Sephora is a cosmetics brand that offers preferences as personalized rewards recommendations for their tiered loyalty program.

Perfecting customer experience takes time and critical and intuitive observations of both explicit and implicit signals. For instance, abandoned shopping carts signal a bad customer experience. You must figure out the associated pain point and fix the problem at the operational design level to prevent recurrences, even when customers are reticent. Your work never ends, constantly use available tools for data analytics and predictive analytics. In other words, remain flexible and responsive to changing customer demands.

Here are examples of how you can apply the above.

• Hire front line staff with the ability for empathy and emotional intelligence. Your HRM strategies should specifically target and hone those skills on every point of employee contact through job descriptions, job interviews, training and so on.
• Train your sales team to deliver 'plus one' bonus products or services (that are relevant to your business). Among other things, this may involve empowering staff with certain decision-making authorities. For instance, sales staff may be allowed to offer gifts in the form of add-ons up to a value of $x to customers with characteristics regarding.
• Train front line staff to meet customer needs. For instance, set up backend facilities that allow your sales team to collect and review notes related to conversations and other interactions with customers. These data may be later cited, perhaps as memorable handwritten notes at the point of delivery. Needless to say, this example highlights the need for company-wide integration of the customer experience unique value proposition. So everyone, from front end to delivery departments, working directly or indirectly with that customer is on the same page.
• Be readily available when the customer needs you.

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CONTENT RELATED TO CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE (CX)

• Customer experience (CX) is interested in meeting customer needs holistically. However, since customer communication must still remain simple with usually a single strong message, establish a clear unique value proposition as an initial catch to get Jane in the door. It does not clash with the holistic personal marketing approach geared towards good customer experience.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Data mining is a very key aspect of planning for superior customer experience.
• Some forms of tentpole marketing can be a useful response to customer needs
• See how McDonalds revolutionized their production to ensure positive customer experience that delivered on expectation for fast food; food that took 30 minutes and not 3 hours.
• Customer experience is expected to be the #1 brand differentiator over price and product by 2020 (Customers 2020 Report). They can and often will leave at the slightest disappointment. Customers are more educated, savvy and vocal than ever. Reducing your customer defection rate by 5% can increase your proditability by as much as 25 to 125% (Leading on the Edge of Chaos, Emmet Murphy and Mark Murphy).
• Tiered loyalty programs can add value to the customer experience.
• Using brand storytelling for evangelism
• See how to handle customer complaints.
• Customer experience mapping.
• Some apps that can contribute to superior customer experience.
• Strategically set advanced notification and triggers on your live chat apps
• Create tags in trouble tickets