Customer Service Vs Customer Experience CX: Key Differences And Similarities

How AI Is Changing the ROI of Customer Service SPONSOR CONTENT FROM INTERCOM

With over 20 years experience, Blair provides insights for companies of all sizes. She has authored many highly acclaimed multi-client market studies and white papers, as well as custom research reports, and provides market research analysis and consulting services to both end user and vendor clients. Excellent communication is unquestionably among the most important elements of customer service, but it’s easy to overlook, so don’t make that mistake. Customer retention is critical, so every customer deserves to be treated as a vital business asset. Set this standard to ensure your team knows customer satisfaction is the No.1 priority.

14 customer experience conferences to attend in 2024 – TechTarget

14 customer experience conferences to attend in 2024.

Posted: Wed, 11 Sep 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]

The lack of easily accessible data and BSH’s complex system landscape also affected the company’s ability to quickly and effectively implement improved customer relationship management solutions. This deficiency impacted the targeted marketing campaigns that would help boost the consumer experience (CX) and engagement. “As consumer demand and expectations increase this season, brands must prioritize transparency and empathy to build enduring trust and loyalty with consumers.” Online consumer behaviour regarding OST, exemplified through virtual catalogue, digital wallpaper, digital signage significantly influences customer experience and determine customer to revisit the online store (Alexander & Kent, 2022). Multisensory experience through online store technologies such as including touch screens, virtual and augmented reality, are more and more available in online stores influencing online consumer experiences (Petit et al. 2019). The use of technologies in value creation occurs through the cognitive, sensory/emotional, and social components (Hoyer et al. 2020).

Positive, caring messaging and actions can be a natural extension of your company’s mission statement, purpose and values. As seen in the below graph, the number one issue mentioned by 60 percent of respondents was the fear that the use of AI will make it more difficult to reach a human agent. But they can’t ignore concerns about AI use, especially when it could mean losing customers. The danger of customer-facing AI potentially alienating an organization’s consumer base was discussed by Keith McIntosh, Senior Principal of Research at Gartner Customer Service and Support Practice.

What Does a Great Customer Experience Look Like Now?

When a customer comments on social media with a problem, you probably need to discuss it via private message to actually resolve it. Letting customers know to message you is a basic, but important, thing to include in a reply. Take it a step further with social listening tools that scan the web for non-tagged mentions of your brand (or other keywords). Complicated situations where there isn’t a clearcut “if this happens, then that” logic path need to be talked through person-to-person. But there’s a difference between real negative feedback and an untrue story meant to smear your reputation or brand image.

8 strategies for using AI for customer service in 2025 – Sprout Social

8 strategies for using AI for customer service in 2025.

Posted: Tue, 30 Jul 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Some retailers outsource certain activities to keep overall costs low and to tap into more resources. Examples of outsourced activities might include sentiment analysis, customer service or marketing support. Companies, such as clothing brands or home goods suppliers, have built outaugmented reality (AR) capabilities so customers can try on clothing or see how furniture will look before buying them.

For United Communications, this means going beyond quick fixes and creating personalized experiences that build trust and loyalty. Whether serving families or businesses, they prioritize understanding and addressing the unique needs of their customers. Attendees will gain insights into elevating customer success processes from support functions to revenue-driving growth engines, aligning organizational initiatives through CS operations and transforming digital experiences to amplify conversions. Successful customer experience management initiatives break down organizational silos, share information in new ways and most importantly, share responsibility for customer experience and customer satisfaction. Companies committed to customer experience often unify customer data across disciplines—sales, marketing, and customer support—to create a single source of truth about customers. And most appoint a C-level executive, typically a customer experience officer (CXO), with the authority to make departments work together on cross-functional issues that impact customer experience.

Company

In addition to the survey, we interviewed online shoppers and compared traditional and new shopping experiences with different types of generative AI, taking into consideration customers’ expectations about personalization. We then mapped their perceptions over the entire purchasing journey—from awareness to purchase and beyond. While customers expect seamless digital and physical experiences, sometimes issues arise. Examples can include encountering different prices or offers on different channels and needing to supply information they already provided. Established companies in the retail industry are increasingly under competition from startup e-commerce companies and direct-to-consumer brands, so they need to focus on delivering excellent customer experiences. Retail customer experience (retail CX) is the act of providing customers with excellent service during shopping and buying opportunities through in-store or digital e-commerce channels.

Customer service may draw customer interaction data about customer queries or complaints and the company’s response to them, from the customer relationship management (CRM) platform. A CRM software basically helps businesses record and maintain customer data to track customer interactions and improve customer relationships. Promoting interdepartmental collaboration, a CRM helps CS executives with all the relevant information and customer insights, allowing them to serve every individual customer seamlessly over their journey.

The company boasts a renowned portfolio of seven kitchenware brands, including Corelle, Pyrex and Instant Pot. Managing customer service for such a diverse lineup requires constant innovation guided by consumer insights. A Q Sprout Pulse Survey shows that 80% of consumers strongly or somewhat agree they use social media for customer service needs more now than they did a year ago. If that doesn’t make the case, don’t worry—we’re just scratching the surface. Here are three more benefits businesses gain from close collaboration between customer service and marketing teams.

The Growing Importance Of Effortless Experiences

And while some of these headlines range from the bizarre to the troubling, when you dig a little deeper there are often important and beneficial customer service and experience lessons to be learned. From painfully long wait times, to law-breaking chatbots, and everything in between, we’ve put together a list of 10 of the worst examples of customer service from the past few years. However, despite the excitement around the potential of these new tools, the sector continues to see its fair share of bad customer service stories. On the other side, we need to introduce friction in the form of the human agency and interaction to make experiences authentic, real and memorable. The challenge is to find the right balance for your brand and experience portfolio. We need to scale experiences efficiently with technology while introducing friction in the form of the human agency and interaction to make experiences authentic, real and memorable.

Customers want to help themselves to find the information, answers, and support they need. What follows are several key elements of a good CX strategy and the technologies that drive them. As a consultant, I observed a group of product and risk leaders working together. They realized that many fields in their credit card application form were redundant or unnecessary, so they removed more than 60% of the fields and added smart field pre-filling (with information they already had).

It strengthens your company’s reputation and helps you earn repeat business and frequent referrals. Consistently providing excellent customer service is the best way to retain customers, boost satisfaction and grow your business. We have financial relationships with some companies we cover, earning commissions when readers purchase from our partners or share information about their needs. Our editorial team independently evaluates and recommends products and services based on their research and expertise. Both – customer experience- and its sub-set, customer service, are crucial to driving customer engagement, delight, and retention.

In a noisy and crowded business environment, where share of customer attention and trust are increasingly hard to win, delightful, empathetic experiences can differentiate brands and build loyalty. In addition to providing better customer support, human agents can use generative AI to get more accurate, relevant, and timely data on each customer and entice them to make additional purchases. Empowering reps to devise creative solutions shows customers that your company will go above and beyond to make them happy. When a customer contacts your business about a problem, your customer service team must react with empathy.

Self-service kiosks at restaurants and retail stores also allow customers to access their loyalty program, so they can view and redeem rewards and earn points directly through the kiosk interface. At hotels, a self-service kiosk can greet guests in their native language, check them in, and suggest hotel amenities, such as room service, fitness centers, and poolside cabanas. NVIDIA AI Blueprints make it easy to start building and setting up virtual assistants by offering ready-made workflows and tools to accelerate deployment.

Field tested tips for aligning customer service and marketing

A positive customer experience will almost always be dependent on a positive experience for all the people involved in delivering it. This creates a positive cycle — satisfied employees help make satisfied customers, which in turn helps boost employee satisfaction. We should stop thinking about “customers” and “employees” and instead optimize for human experience.

Businesses that successfully implement AI-powered service are able to leverage automation and data integration to improve efficiency, accuracy, and customer satisfaction. Improve communication by hiring effective communicators, reduce wait times at physical locations, ensure websites are easy to navigate and make it seamless for customers to transition between support channels. Empower agents to resolve cases, and most importantly, make sure the mobile app is user-friendly. “With our new OneConsumer Engagement Platform we are creating a transparent win-win for both our consumers and our employees, leveraging unified data across brands, touchpoints, and processes to improve quality of life at home in every interaction.

NVIDIA NIM Agent Blueprints provide developers with packaged reference examples to build innovative solutions for customer service applications. With AI-powered support experiences, retailers can enhance customer retention, strengthen brand loyalty and boost sales. To solidify understanding of ROI before scaling AI deployments, companies can consider a pilot period. For example, by redirecting 20% of call center traffic to AI solutions for one or two quarters and closely monitoring the outcomes, businesses can obtain concrete data on performance improvements and cost savings. RAG frameworks connect foundation or general-purpose LLMs to proprietary knowledge bases and data sources, including inventory management and customer relationship management systems and customer service protocols.

• US e-commerce sales are expected to reach 22.7% of the retail market1 share this year, an increase from 2023’s figure of 21.6%, according to FTI Consulting.
• The latest version by Samsung launched with Windows OS for ultimate flexibility, and it can work out of the box with many of the major point-of-sale providers.
• Measure organic and paid campaigns, comments, messages, engagement, and much more.
• A customer persona also called a buyer persona, is a fictional or semi-fictional character who represents a significant segment of a company’s customers or potential customers.
• He is the founder and editor of TechSpective and a senior PR manager with NetApp.
• Today’s consumer isn’t very patient, for example, as just over half, 54%, would choose dealing with slow-moving traffic than having a poor customer experience.

Some people reported good experiences with companies others considered “awful.” HealthPartners was an example. Let’s take a look at some of the most impactful customer experience conferences to attend in 2025. No better way to answer that question than by getting on the ground and attending some CX industry tradeshows.

Customer experience is defined as the interaction with the healthcare system beyond receiving medical care, such as scheduling an appointment. When health systems are looking to invest and innovate, if they are trying to innovate on a patient experience but focus more on consumer-centric factors such as billing and scheduling, they are missing the mark, Goad says. Ensuring patients have transportation is another element of generating a good customer experience, Way says. “One of the big initiatives across the country is to look at social determinants of health,” Way says.

And there’s no sweeter harmony than what’s created through collaboration between customer service and marketing. AI technology—along with humans—is another powerful tool that can capture customer sentiment to understand how customers perceive or feel about a brand during interactions with it. For example, what people say, or the tone they use on a call, can indicate if they are satisfied or not throughout a call.

Responding quickly to questions about volunteering and the current fundraiser status is crucial for maintaining the organization’s social trust that has been built on operational transparency over the past 30 years. Chatbots may be vulnerable to hacking and security breaches, leading to the potential compromise of customer data. There are several ways in which chatbots may be vulnerable to hacking and security breaches. Chatbots can handle password reset requests from customers by verifying their identity using various authentication methods, such as email verification, phone number verification, or security questions.

The teams now have the flexibility to prioritize issues and set turn-around-times based on severity or which service will add more value to the customers. This helps them drive how they serve customers and thus be more effective in delivering quality customer service, week after week, sprint after sprint. AI systems can manage repetitive tasks such as password resets or order status updates without the need for human intervention.

Blair Pleasant is President & Principal Analyst of COMMfusion LLC and a co-founder of UCStrategies. Prior to COMMfusion, Blair was Director of Communications Analysis for The PELORUS Group, a market research and consulting firm, and President of Lower Falls Consulting. It’s important to establish a rapport with the customers via brief small talk and pleasantries and then focus on the issue at hand. Responsive customer service also means customers don’t have to wait long for help. The ACA report noted that 73 percent of customers would be “delighted” if a company responded to a support email within an hour.

Instead, we’ll see a shift toward unified AI stacks—platforms that seamlessly combine machine learning, generative AI, and agentic automation into one cohesive system. This approach will replace the patchwork of specialized tools with smooth, end-to-end automation that feels fully connected. They demand that companies fulfil their basic commitments and deliver on promises. “We are having to shift as physicians and providers from the idea that providing medical care is enough for the people we serve,” Way says. A health system that fails to distinguish between patient experience and customer experience will see the effect in negative satisfaction scores, Goad says.

Conducted by Gartner, the findings are based on a survey of almost 6,000 customers across four continents. The results outline a clear disconnect between companies and customers regarding the use of AI. Despite pressure for CX leaders to adopt more GenAI solutions, customers are turning their back on the tech. Some customers prioritize buying from businesses that place sustainability at the top of their values. Retailers that are interested in reaching these customers should focus on minimizing their carbon footprint by embracing a sustainable supply chain, lower energy usage and eco-friendly materials. There are several trends that have improved customer experience in recent years.

These efforts highlight their mission to connect people and businesses, not just with technology but also through meaningful relationships. Chatbots may not be able to handle complex issues that require human intervention, leading to customer frustration and dissatisfaction. Further, chatbots may encounter technical errors, such as misinterpretation of customer inquiries, leading to inaccurate or irrelevant responses.

Key components of the customer experience in healthcare involve taking steps beyond the provision of medical care, such as providing resources for follow-up care or health and wellness services, Way says. Tools that help your teams, like AI chatbots, personalize messages and enact smart workflows, will enable your teams to support customers wherever and however they interact with your brand. Plus, with CRM integrations, you get a 360-degree view of the customer to strike a balance between scalable automation and personalized service. Set up continuous monitoring to track the performance of your AI customer service tools and their output accuracy.

Customer service teams are uniquely positioned to identify the surprise and delight opportunities that exist within everyday interactions. When a customer mentions a celebration or shows enthusiasm for a product, that’s your moment to act. By equipping them with examples of what to look for, you increase their ability to identify and flag high-value content, ensuring these hidden gems make their way to the right marketing teammate. To address these challenges, the same Pulse Survey found 45% of customer care leaders intend to invest in integrated technology that enables their teams to collaborate within unified systems.

When we think about the new economics of AI, it’s easy to get caught up in how it affects the existing customer service model. But one of the most powerful aspects of AI is how it breaks open and helps you reimagine what that model can look like in the first place, creating new opportunities for your team and your business. When you’re shopping for—or calculating the value of—an AI agent, you need to look beyond the sticker price and consider the price per resolution.

CS effectiveness measurement is always interaction-specific such that it is measured on a case-by-case basis to gauge how customers feel about your services at a specific stage in their journey. In a venn diagram, customer service will occupy a significant area within the larger circle of customer experience. Our sister community, Reworked, gathers the world’s leading employee experience and digital workplace professionals. And our newest community, VKTR, is home for AI practitioners and forward thinking leaders focused on the business of enterprise AI. Dreamforce 2025 is Salesforce’s flagship conference, bringing together a global community of professionals across various industries to explore the latest innovations in customer relationship management (CRM) and beyond. The event offers a blend of in-person and virtual experiences, featuring keynote presentations, interactive sessions, hands-on workshops, and networking opportunities.