Customer service versus customer support: Are they the same?
Customer service and customer support are always used interchangeably. Many people think they are the same – both in meaning and functions. But no. Although online customer service and online customer support have the main goal – to serve customers and give them the best support they need about products and services, they still have quite different. It is challenging to distinguish between these two words. Google and dictionaries also provide similar definitions.
The main role of customer service is to take care of the customer’s needs by providing useful help before, during, and after product purchases. It is about supporting major and non-technical problems with customers. It involves extensive interactions between a company and a customer and aims to improve customer experiences. It improves the relationships between product owners and customers, while customer support is only part of these interactions.
Meanwhile, customer support is a specific type of customer service that involves documentation, product feedback, and solving technical problems. Its interactions tend to be reactive and short-lived. In most cases, the customer reaches out to the company to expand their concerns and find support for the product they purchased. Online customer support agents either implement the solution itself or guide customers through more relevant steps.
To make it more concise and clear, the difference between customer service and customer support is that customer support teams support a product, while customer service teams provide service to a customer. But both are similar in the following categories:
- Their main goal is to meet customer needs.
- Both fields use similar customer support tools like phone, email and chat for communication.
- Their employees have similar skills to increase customer satisfaction.
- They are both important for achieving a good customer experience.
However, customer service and customer support for your e-commerce have separate functions.
Customer service performs the following tasks:
- Maintain new customers
- Answer questions from customers
- Help customers with billing and delivery issues
- Resolve non-technical account issues
- Recommend better tools or techniques
- Collect customer reviews and feedback
- Make an upselling (if there are opportunities)
Customer service performs the following tasks:
- Provide real-time troubleshooting with customers via support email and live chat
- Help customers install, maintain, upgrade and discard your product or service
- Help customers with billing and delivery issues
- Create product documentation and support resources
- Provide input to product development
Having customer service and customer support is a great help in maintaining your product competence. It also helps maintain customer loyalty and attracts new customers to switch to your products when they know that there are support teams who are always ready to listen to their questions and solve their problems. And a cost-effective way to provide customer care is to outsource your customer service and support. Many companies outsource their customer service and support. This means handing over customer service and support aspects that are essential for the company to the outsourcing companies. Because customer service outsourcing offers the most affordable and great customer care, even start-up entrepreneurs can provide the best customer service and support to their customers.
Outsourcing customer service is best done through OnlineFactory.
