What should your business focus on - customer service, customer experience or customer engagement?

Work I've been doing with a client over the last two or three months has meant I've had lots of conversations with senior managers.  During these conversations I've noticed they use the phrases "customer service", "customer experience" and "customer engagement" interchangeably, seemingly without any clarity about what they mean or indeed whether they are different. 

If they are going to improve any of these things I think it's important they develop their understanding.  So here's how I suggested they think about the similarities and differences:

Customer Service ...
is what an organisation does when delivering its products and services to customers, and how it does it.  Clearly it's hugely important. It needs to be planned so that delivery is efficient and effective. Efficient so that the costs of delivery aren't higher than the business can afford, and effective so that it evokes the right feelings in customers.  Customers may talk about the service they receive but in reality what drives them to comment at all is how they feel as a result of the service.

Customer Experience ...
is therefore about how customers feel as a result of the service they receive.  So what are feelings?  They are bodily states that are caused largely by chemistry (hormones).  They usually have related thoughts and ideas which can be used to label them, define them and express them, but are themselves bodily states. 

It's also worth remembering that feelings start with the five senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste.  So what the customer sees, hears, feels, smells and tastes impact their experience.   That's why businesses recognised for superior customer experience think about how they deliver multi-sensory experiences, positively stimulating as many of the senses as possible in every intereaction.  Because  customers have an experience every time they interact with the business.  Indeed, they can't not have an experience.

Customer Engagement ...
is the outcome an organisation wants as a result of the service they deliver and the experience the customer has.  It results in the customer feeling a sense of trust, commitment and loyalty which
means they are more likely to buy its products and services. 


That's how I suggested they think about it and it's already brought a greater clarity to the conversations I hear and to their planning.  They realise that when they previously talked about customer experience or engagement, what they really meant was customer service.  They understand now that their objective is customer engagement.  And they know that in order to develop it they need to think more broadly about the what and the how of their customer service.

But this isn't the end of the story.  Because we've also talked about how customer experience and engagement can't be delivered by service alone.  More about that next time....

LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/timhadfield
Twitter: @accordengage
Telephone: 0044 07906650019