When looking at the difference between customer service and customer support many people confuse the two. Not every Customer Service function will support the customer and not every Customer Support function will adhere to general definitions of Customer support.
When this is looked at in the details you find that the root cause of this is Customer Support is there to provide answers to questions and Customer Service is there to reinforce positive feelings and emotions.
We can think about this in simple terms of ordering a coffee. Customer support is telling the customer what flavors and options are available. If the Customer asks for vanilla and there is not an option for Vanilla then you effectively cannot ‘support’ the customer in giving them what they want, but you can still provide Customer service in suggesting other options and doing so in a polite and courteous manner. In this way all customer support is customer service but not all customer service is customer support.
It is an understanding of this that underpins ‘Customer Success’ because when you break down Customer Success into its core values you find that the Success element is about a feeling that the Customer gets at the end of their interaction with the Business.
This is why a Key factor in Marketing is defining the ‘Story’ of the company to the customer. It is also why many Companies have seemingly generic or ‘Cookie Cutter’ values because at the core they want to sell their Story about giving a successful interaction to their customers.
Before we can dig deeper we need to understand what Success looks like from a Businesses perspective and the Customers perspective.
A successful business interaction can usually be quantified. This is either via a Lead generation, opportunity for sale, Sale and PO recept or conclusion of an after sales operation such as a deployment of software or closure of a service desk ticket.
From a customer perspective this is generally less quantifiable as it opens up the world of feeling vs provision of service. The emotional state of the customer have have a large bearing on whether they perceive the interaction with a business as a ‘success’. For example, a mechanic servicing a car can go from a ‘success’ from the customer perspective to a negative if an unexpected fault or mechanical issue occurs and bill increases. Such an interaction while still a success for the business(the mechanic) can change the emotional state of the customer from a positive to a negative by no fault of the business
It is for this reason that marketing advertising and post sale aftercare is so important. Marketing and advertising is designed to entice the customer to purchase and the post sale aftercare is there to solidify the relationship between the customer and the business.
Using the above example a mechanic can explain that they can knock money off or get a discount on parts or charge only for their work to soften the blow of an unexpected bill on the customer site. Alternatively they can explain why the problem needs to be fixed and benefits of doing so. Equally the negatives of not fixing the problem can be explained to advise on why the issue does need fixing.
In this manner the emotional state of the customer can be changed to view the problem as a positive rather than a negative.
It is how this information is conveyed, it’s professionalism and its depth or conciseness that plays the most part in how a customer can view a business interaction as a negative or a positive.
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