For most companies, customer service and customer support are part of the same department. The difference between customer service and customer support can be categorised as follows:
- Customer service is a group of people who interact with customers to bring them value, increase their overall satisfaction with your product or service and contribute overall to the customer experience.
- A customer support team mainly deals with technical problems. The staff in this team help customers to manage any problems resulting from their interaction with the products or services offered by your company.
A company can choose a contact centre that offers either of these services depending on how it wants to differentiate itself from its competitors.
In this article, we’re going to give you an overview of these two concepts so that you can easily distinguish between them. Let’s explore each of the roles of these teams for a better understanding.
The definition and role of Customer Service
Customer service is the process of providing assistance to customers. This includes answering questions about the company’s products, services, policies and procedures, as well as helping people who have encountered problems during the purchasing process.
Customer service involves assisting the user throughout their journey to help them get the most out of a product/service. Contact centre agents need soft skills, as their main objective is customer satisfaction.
Here are the main responsibilities of a customer service agent:
- Assisting the customer before, during and after the use of the product/service
- Building relationships with customers
- Contribute to a good customer experience
- Helping customers with their complaints, concerns and questions
Customer experience is an essential part of a company’s success. Most companies have customer support teams that help solve problems and answer customers’ questions. However, the customer experience team has a much broader definition.
It involves interactions with the company’s customers that aim to improve the customer experience and enhance the relationship with the company in general, whereas customer support is only one part of this.
Customer service can be defined as taking care of a customer’s needs by providing helpful assistance before, during and after the sale of a product.
In fact, customer service is often used by companies that want to enhance their reputation by paying close attention to their customers.
The definition and role of Customer Support
Customer support is primarily aimed at solving technical problems. Contact centre agents must therefore have technical skills, as their primary objective is to resolve specific problems. Such teams are needed in companies that supply specific software or hardware and therefore cater for customers who need technical assistance.
On the other hand, customer support is an activity carried out by agents who are responsible for resolving queries raised by customers. This includes troubleshooting and resolving technical problems.
Here are the main responsibilities of a customer support agent in a contact centre:
- Helping customers solve specific, mainly technical, problems
- Alerting the IT team if a new and unexpected problem arises
- Handling errors, orders, cancellations, etc
Today, there are many customer support services, some of which are dedicated to helping customers plan, install, troubleshoot, maintain or upgrade products. Others focus more on disposing of old products once they have become obsolete.
The term ‘customer support’ mainly refers to the teams in SaaS and technology companies who work to help customers with products and services that require ongoing technical support.
How can we help our customer support and customer service teams to do an excellent job?
Customer support and customer service teams are the company’s brand ambassadors. It is therefore necessary to find effective ways for them to succeed in their missions.
The agents in these departments will be better equipped to manage customer relations if the contact centre you have chosen is already investing in innovative tools, voice reminders or interactive voice response. These new trends in contact centres will enable customer support and customer service agents to devote all their energy and attention to customer satisfaction.
At the same time, it’s important to bear in mind that these days, people prefer to search for information themselves and try to solve the problems they face before contacting customer service or support. That’s why your website should contain :
- A help portal.
- FAQ pages.
- Practical guides and demonstration videos.
- A chatbot.
- And so on.
It’s always important to think about your target audience, the questions they have and the formats that will appeal most to them. With these elements, you’ll be able to serve your customers better and help your contact centre teams.
If you still have doubts about choosing your new contact centre, don’t hesitate to contact us. Advancia Teleservices is here to guide you and answer all your questions.
We are one of the most important contact centres in Tunisia, because we place innovation and excellence in customer service at the heart of our concerns ?