Customer: Service or Success?

The thin line between love and hate is probably the same thin line between customer service and customer success.

On this journey of ours, we have encountered a lot of customer centric titles ranging from customer experience to customer service to customer support to customer success and my personal favorite, customer happiness.

One thing they all have in common is “customer” and customer service vs customer success will be taking the center stage. Is customer service and customer success two sides of the same coin? Do they have mutuals or is theirs a case of FC and 30 BG?

Let's find out!

The definition is always a good place to start.

Customer service typically means providing timely, attentive, upbeat service to a customer. This is to ensure that their needs are met in a manner that reflects positively on the brand or business.

Whereas, customer success ​​is a business method ensuring customers achieve success: their desired outcomes while using your product or service. This is identifying what success means to your customers and helping them achieve that in every aspect of their customer journey with your business. Customer Success is relationship-focused.

Customer service is reactive as it mainly focuses on problem solving whereas customer success tends to be proactive as it preempts and prevents problems for the customer while building long term relationships and fostering growth. I like to say that customer success does the chasing and customer service is more of a passive toaster.

When a customer has a complaint, be it technical complications or general customer confusion about the product and services, customer service zones in on the problem, utilises a series of processes to resolve the complaint all the while ensuring that the customer is provided with the best possible customer experience. But you see customer success, yeah, it is all about the “bigger picture”. It is data driven. It involves collating customer data insights and harnessing them into strategies that will ensure that customers get value from the business and goals are achieved. Feel free to call customer success “A King and more”

However, despite the differences, customer service and customer success cannot operate as lone wolves. Without a clear and open line of communication between them, important customer data and insight will inevitably be lost and customer experience will suffer the brunt. It is therefore important that there is perfect harmony between customer service and customer success, making sure that all involved are on the same page as regards the customer’s issue(s) in order to avoid contradictions which will confuse and frustrate the customer.

How then do we go about this beautiful harmony and the resulting symphony?

●      Ensure that customer data is easily accessible to both teams and that the information shared and seen by both teams is the same.

●      Set up a reliable system to facilitate data analysis and to ensure no pattern is overlooked and no trend is missed. Be it a customer is ready for an upgrade or needs a little extra support, it is imperative that both teams are not only aware of the situation, but are on the same page as to how to address it.

●      Facilitate an open and clear line of communication between both teams to communicate clearly and efficiently with one another.

●      Work platforms between the teams should be transparent.

One thing is certain though, customer service and customer success share similar goals (customer satisfaction) and require a similar skill set albeit varying method of approach and implementation.

A toast to the best of both worlds. 🥂

Cheers,

Seun