Do we really understand the difference between customer service delivery and customer experience delivery? Or, do we use the two terms interchangeably?
At times, our self-focused perception leaves customer service delivery up to everyone with “service” as part of their job titles. That means we assume customer service is someone else’s responsibility. Certainly not ours.
After all, we have more important things to do, selling, engineering, coding, managing. Even leading. Oh really?
In today’s digitally connected, Industry40 business environments, everyone throughout an organization becomes an integral component of customer service delivery.
Customer service encompasses the actions, processes, software, machinery and people involved in serving, delivering and assisting in taking care of customer needs and requirements. Throughout that customer’s lifecycle. Which means, realistically, that no one in an organization gets a free pass out of this professional responsibility.
As a result, customer service represents the degree of interoperability that exists between each of these key components. Regardless of the size of a company or the current professional skills bandwidth of the workforce.
Even when the organization does not establish universal standards for customer service delivery. Or the business model maintains departmentally-specific KPIs which may not complement a company-wide customer service delivery vision.
Customer experience delivery is impacted by how well each, integral customer service component combines, holistically, to better serve each customer.
And here’s where the disconnect happens. Most organizations become painfully aware that they fall short when serving customers after “something” problematic happens. Or when periodic customer experience surveys return less-than-remarkable results. The problem must be solved!! People panic, working in isolation, rather than in an integrated manner. And the workplace degenerates into crisis mode.
That scenario is played out daily, in organizations of all sizes. As a result, companies take their heads out of sand. They readjust their self-focus on meeting internal KPIs. Instead, they tactically and reactively start refocusing on external customers. For a change.
When integral customer service components are neither integrated nor deemed integral, customer service delivery discontinuity happens. Just ask your customers. They have their own expression for this dysfunction: “The right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.”
When customer service delivery is not a cultural element of customer experience delivery, the customer gets abandoned along the way.
Yes, each customer has a journey that our organizations need to understand. However, each of us, as Professionals of Worth, also are responsible for understanding each of our customers’ contexts, throughout our unique relationship with them. Otherwise, our customers become “someone else’s” responsibility. Although we, ourselves, may not have a clue who that “someone else” actually is.
Also, each customer is touched by every interaction with our organization’s brand, in one way or another. Even if our company does not measure the quality and quantity of these interactions. Especially if customer experience surveys measure the wrong stuff. Because when it comes to current, maturing customers, their requirements often are far different than those of new customers.
Finally, customer service delivery happens in all sorts of environments. Not just because they receive a survey from us. In today’s digitally transforming customer ecosystems, the customer interacts with people, software, systems and machines. Virtually face-to-face or actually face-to-face. Via artificially intelligent inter “faces.” Through sensor-based feedback loops displayed on screens in B2B as well as B2C settings.
Customer service delivery is everyone’s job responsibility.
Service delivery excellence, and all of the experiences related to this delivery, is created by all of us. When we interact with each other, internally, as we better serve our customers. If we continue to keep our heads buried in the sand, assuming “someone else” is taking care of our customers because we are too busy, then we are not creating remarkable and enduring client experiences. The types of experiences which fuel customer success and customer retention.
Looking for a dynamic speaker on customer experience, collaboration and customer retention? Then take a look at my latest speaking programs and workshops.
What do we plan to do, differently, Tomorrow and in the Future? Yesterday’s strategies were not created for today’s digitally transforming, customer environments?
Babette Ten Haken’s One Millimeter Mindset™ speaking programs showcase how profitable collaboration catalyzes purposeful, innovative personal development, leadership communication and business growth. Her professional speaker profile appears on the espeakers platform. Babette’s Playbook of collaboration hacks, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon.com.
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