Definition, Abilities, Significance, And Recommendations For Customer Service

Any successful company relies on excellent customer service. Learn what it is, why it's essential, and how professionals handle it.

Customer service is experiencing a period of growth. It's more crucial than ever to provide quick, relevant help to your consumers in today's highly competitive, digital-first environment.

Being where your customers are — and helping them solve their issues — should be a top focus for every organization, whether that's via email, texting, social media, or the phone.

What does it mean to provide customer service?

When a consumer has a problem with a company's goods or services, customer support is the group of individuals that aid them. It all boils down to ensuring that consumers are successful in resolving the challenges they came to your company to assist with.

What does a customer service representative do?

Depending on your company, sector, and who your clients are, customer service may take on a variety of forms. However, for Meg Palazzolo, a customer service representative, it's all about being helpful.

"The goal of customer service is to improve the user's experience with your product," says Palazzolo, Trust & Will's Head of Member Success. "It is the task and obligation of the support agent to become customer champions in order to assist influence the future of their company's product, marketing, and R&D, among other things." "Any customer-centric company's core is customer assistance."

Customer support, according to Brian Kale, Novo's Director of Customer Success, is all about developing trust, which affects everything from customer loyalty and retention to brand and marketing.

"Build trust through empathizing with them, being honest with them, having clear expectations, and advocating for them inside using data and insights," Kale adds.

Customer assistance, according to Kale, should grow into a long-term company strategy. That means it's not only about responding to customer issues; it's also about equipping them with the skills they'll need to succeed throughout their relationship with your company.

According to Kale, the idea is to "use all of the information and insights support operations create when dealing with customers to develop better experiences that proactively fix problems and answer questions by enabling consumers to take action by empowering customers to take action."

The terms "customer service" and "customer support" are sometimes used interchangeably.

So, essentially, we're talking about customer service? Certainly not.

When it comes to customer service and customer support, what is the difference?
Even Google has trouble differentiating between customer assistance and customer service, according to several experts.

Customer service refers to any interactions that improve the customer's experience and assist the firm develop its connection with them. One sort of engagement is customer service.

Customer service is provided by all companies, although it is not required by all of them. Customer service is provided in a restaurant, for example, when you are seated, ordering your meal, and paying. However, the waiter is unlikely to demonstrate how to prepare your steak.

The distinction between customer service and customer support, according to Jonathan Brummel, Director of Enterprise Support at Zendesk, is that a customer support staff can address a technical problem quickly, but effective customer service helps create connections and form a real partnership over time.

If customer support is the how, such as debugging an issue, customer service is the why—why it's suggested to set up your cloud account in a specific manner or why today's problem might become a greater problem in the future if certain measures aren't done.

Customers will have a better experience if the "why" is included in the support process. It will also help agents progress.

A consumer may have contacted you about a stolen credit card, for example. Going the additional mile may go a long way beyond determining what information was exposed and taking actions to resolve the situation.

What are the benefits of customer service to your company?

The simple answer is that customer service is critical because support personnel are critical for swiftly and efficiently resolving client concerns and ensuring customer happiness. Customers' retention, lifetime value, and brand reputation are all affected as a result of this.

However, it all relies on your specific company and sector, as well as the individuals you're assisting.

Customer service is a fundamental driver of business and product choices for Trust & Will, a firm that helps families establish personalized wills and estate plans.

"Every choice we make as a business revolves around our customers (whom we refer to as members), and our customer care staff is at the forefront of every communication," Palazzolo explains. "When it comes to introducing new features, goods, or updates/changes to the marketing site, we listen to the feedback of our support staff, which serves as our customer's voice."

Because estate planning is so complicated, Trust & Will's support staff is essential in educating clients and then sharing that knowledge with the rest of the company. It's a business-critical virtuous loop.