1. Perception of your customer service:

Customer experience largely determines how your customers perceive your customer service. Both in the process before the contact moment and during and even after. For example, is it easy to reach customer service? That perception can already influence how someone experiences the contact moment. Do you have to put a lot of effort into finding the customer service number, do you have to go through a very unclear selection menu and then stand on hold for 20 minutes? That experience undoubtedly influences the perception of the contact moment.

2. Customer service as an added value in your customer experience:

Good customer service has a positive impact on your customer experience. A pleasant contact moment where you feel you are taken seriously as a customer and where efforts are made to make your experience as pleasant as possible makes you feel good. That positive customer service experience will positively influence your image of the organisation, company, institution, web shop or whatever.

3. Customer loyalty:

Both good customer service and good customer experience have a positive impact on customer loyalty. A kind of 1+1=3. Good customer experience is +1. Good customer service is +1. But if customer service or customer experience is bad then it's immediately a -1 because it doesn't add value but detracts. You get more loyal customers by having both your customer service and customer experience at an equal (high of course) level.

4. Brand perception:

Again, something where the 2 go hand in hand. Creating a working experience. The customer experience, like customer service, is an important part of that. You can invest a lot in marketing and creating a certain brand. If your customer experience and customer service are not seamlessly aligned with it, they add nothing in the brand experience. For example, if you want to exude a certain level of luxury and exclusivity as a brand, you cannot afford to be unfriendly to customers.

5. Customer experience prevents unnecessary customer contact:

The moment you have tailored your processes to your customer's needs, they will be less likely to need to contact you about something that is unclear or incorrect. Unnecessary customer contact is not good for your customer experience so if you can avoid that, it's a win-win.

6. Repair:

A dent in the customer experience such as a complaint, for example, can be repaired by customer service. This can be done by handling an incoming complaint very well and neatly. It can also be done by actively approaching customers the moment there are complaints and offering a solution. In this way, customer service can in some cases fix the customer experience.

7. Knowledge:

Customer service is in constant contact with customers on a wide variety of topics. This makes it a very valuable source of knowledge in many organisations. Knowledge about what is important to customers but also about which processes and or departments cause the most questions or complaints. Because that has a negative impact on the customer experience, this input could well be used to improve that customer experience.

Those were our quick links between customer experience and customer service. There are, of course, several more that could easily be added. Those may come up in a future blog!