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Customer Service. A Crucial Cog in the Brand Experience Wheel. A Few Reasons Why….

By Wavelength Marketing19th June 2012November 9th, 2016blog

At a recent “customer experience” conference in Dubai it soon became apparent a broader view on customer experience was required.  The terms “customer experience” and “customer service” were frequently used interchangeably.   This was a problem because we feel customer service is an important part of the customer experience.  They’re related but not the same.  It can be useful to think of customer service as a crucial cog in the customer experience wheel.

 

At Wavelength we’d make the following distinctions with regards to customer experience and customer service:

Customer Experience Customer Service
Scope Whole customer journey Part of customer journey
Brand values, promise, essence, positioning etc., Brought to life at all touch points along the customer journey (before, during and after sales) Brought to life through “in life” contact with customer
Source of value Value in interaction/ brand engagement Value in issue / complaint resolution
Managing customer expectations Aims to exceed customer expectations at multiple points in customer journey Aims to meet (or exceed as best possible) customer expectations when they contact the company
Value perspective Proactive creation of value Primarily reactive creation of value
Initiator Brand or customer Primarily the customer
Place on organisational chart Multiple employees in multiple departments (if not all) A formal function exists to support the customer and has primary responsibility for customer service

We feel these are the key areas that make customer service a subset of customer experience. There may well be others but, based on our experience with a number of service brands, these drive brand equity. We’d love to hear your views..….

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