Customer service is NOT customer experience. And vice versa. We’ve written about this before, but I was reminded of the difference between the two in a conversation last week.
Customer service tends to focus on behaviors and problem resolution. Customer experience digs much deeper into the processes and tangible items guests can see, hear, smell and feel.
- Customer service is your ticket takers greeting fans as they walk into the stadium.
- Customer experience is the process for fans to open their mobile tickets on their app.
- Customer service is making sure you repair the relationship with a fan when they call in upset about the new parking policy.
- Customer experience is constantly assessing the parking policies to make them as hassle-free as possible.
While both customer experience and customer service seek to deepen emotional connection with your tribe, customer experience tends to be more proactive while customer service tends to be more reactive. Customer service is an extremely important part of the overarching customer experience, but it’s still just one part of many.
While one person may own customer service in your organization, customer experience expands across many different teams within your organization. From ticket sales to community relations, from operations to the sponsorship activation team, everyone owns their own part of the customer experience but there is usually no one person looking at the entire customer experience.
For the next week, we’ll be posting a series of tips on how you can prioritize the entire customer experience, deepen emotional connections with your tribe, and ultimately drive more revenue. To the insights delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletter. Otherwise, check back here tomorrow!