During my stint with IBM, delivering exceptional customer service during client interactions came naturally to me as I consider myself a service-industry child having been born and raised into a travel, tourism and hospitality family background. Naturally, my expectations of service delivered to me were always a notch higher than the people in general.

That was also because I was more focused on the overall experience that a brand generated for me rather than just a one-off instance. I have stuck by this over the years and wasn’t surprised when the whispers picked up about customer experience as opposed to customer service. This raises the popular question – “How different are the two?”

Well, I’d say they are interlinked and multiple instances of delivering customer service leads to the building of a customer experience. So, what exactly are the two? Customer service is simply each single interaction that a customer may have with a representative of an organization or brand in the context of a service request.

While customer experience is the overall experience that is generated for a customer across the various touch points with an organization or brand including interaction with a representative. Thus, customer experience is the over-arching umbrella that customer service falls under the purview of.

So, while customer service aims at a single opportunity to delight the customer and gauges it through a measure of the customer’s satisfaction levels with that interaction, customer experience is all about delivering customer delight at every single touch point with the customer and measures the outcome through a net promoter score.

Further while service is reactive and needs an interaction with a representative, customer experience is all about being proactive and may not require an interaction with a representative. For example, I was recently looking to buy some consumer electronics for my home and made an enquiry call to a multi-brand chain store.

Not only were my queries answered patiently, but I was also given a follow-up call to check if I was interested in visiting the store for a demo. Once I agreed to a store visit, I received a message mentioning the name of the contact person and the store address to make it convenient for me to reach and be attended.

Needless to say, I went ahead with my decision to buy but that wasn’t all. There were messages sent to me congratulating me for my purchases and also to update me about the delivery status, calls were received from the logistics team to check the time convenient for me to receive the delivery of the products and get them installed, follow-up calls made to check if everything went well and if there was anything I needed and how could I reach someone if need be.

So, what started as a simple customer service call for gaining some information turned into a wonderful customer experience and has turned me into a loyal customer who has been recommending this chain of multi-brand stores to everyone wanting to buy a consumer durable.

This is where the importance of delivering an exceptional customer experience comes in. Not only have they been able to retain me as a customer for the slightest of my needs including accessories that they stock, but also there has been an increment in the lifetime of the customer relationship they have developed with me. In the process, they have earned repute for their brand and gained my brand loyalty and developed a competitive advantage.

An important thing to remember is that aspects of a delightful customer service delivered feed into delivering a delightful customer experience. Customer Centricity or customer experience is a speciality competence yet does not get the same focus as sales training. Organizations should thus focus on developing their workforce’s customer centricity by taking them through customer interaction trainings. The focus should be to strike a fine balance through strategy that is all-encompassing and aims to deliver both a satisfactory customer service and a delightful customer experience.

This blog has been written by Namita Singh, Consultant & Project Manager at GrowthSqapes.