Customer Service vs. Customer Support: The Differences
OppZone
Although customer service and customer support are considered the same concepts, they are actually different. Knowing these differences creates a chance to assign business tasks more accurately and meet customer expectations. Here, it begs the question: What are the similarities and differences between customer service and customer support?
What is Customer Service?
Customer service connects your business to your customers. Nearly every company has a dedicated customer service team. Customer service has importance for meeting customer demands and improving customer experience. Customers express more positive opinions on your products and services when they receive satisfying service from the customer service team.
Your business will possibly encounter difficulties unless your customer service is well-organized. Customer service shouldn’t be seen as a stationary process, so it firstly starts with the service and continues all along. Individuals become your customer at the exact moment when they purchase from your brand, but it is your responsibility to convince them to be your regular customer.
The success of businesses greatly depends on the positive opinions of customers. Customer service has social skills that can provide the desired satisfaction and guide the customers during their purchase period.
What is Customer Support?
Customer support aims to solve technical problems about your business’ products and services. Customer support teams are expected to be reactive and find solutions in a short time. The team should focus on solving issues easily and in the shortest time possible. A customer support representative aligns the solutions to practice and guides the customer with the process. A customer support team is not mandatory for each business, yet SaaS, tech, and e-commerce businesses usually prefer to provide this service.
Briefly, a customer support team exists for presenting rapid and efficient solutions to customer problems. Feedback from customers to those teams with similar complaints also helps them develop their services. The team members should be product specialists and have technical skills, unlike the customer representatives. Representatives with high empathy contribute to the positive feedback of the customer experience.
Similarities Between Customer Service and Customer Support
Common importance in customer service and customer support is guiding the customers with the best service. Both teams use means of communication such as email, messages, and calls to provide better service. Brands emphasize investing in both customer service and customer support teams since they are the key to a good customer experience. It can be confidently said that the most common force of them is to keep customer satisfaction at the highest level.
Differences Between Customer Service and Customer Support
The main difference between customer service and customer support is that one supports products while the other provides service mainly for customers. Customer support teams deal with product developments, whereas customer service focuses on customer experience. We can explain the differences in a table:
| Customer Service | Customer Support |
| Satisfies the customer with the purchased goods. | Helps solve technical problems. |
| Is proactive and reactive and aims to guide the customer. | Plays an active role in solving problems on products or services of customers. |
| Takes care of the satisfaction of the customer and their purchased products. | Takes care of the product and the content. |
| Solves and responds to customer problems that require no technical skills. | Focusses on problems that require technical skills. |
| Aims efficiency in customer transactions. | Deals with the experience satisfaction between the customer and product. |
| Is found in every sector that includes customers. | Is usually found in SaaS and e-commerce companies. |
| Measures metrics such as average resolution time and first response time. | Measures net promoter score, customer effort score, and customer churn rate besides the metrics. |
Which Approaches Are Used for Various Business Types?
Usually, customer support teams are found in SaaS, e-commerce, and technology companies. Customer support is always demanded by SaaS and technology companies as it has all the necessary information and solution for the products and services that require support. These companies make sure that their customer support teams are equipped with the business so that the team can provide fast and efficient solutions for any technical issue.
Every business that aims to deliver a product or service to a customer needs a customer service team. Almost every business has this department, and since their approach is more general, it can be accepted in each company. Customer service teams are not equipped in technical subjects, unlike customer support. They aim to provide a good customer experience by having general ideas of all issues that affect customer relations. They closely follow the updates about the business and its products and help improve the business.
How Can Juphy Help Ensure Customer Service and Customer Support?
Juphy presents channels including live chat, cross-platform messaging, and email by providing multichannel customer service. Canned responses of Juphy create a faster first response reaction, and therefore it accelerates the customer experience. They contribute to the customer experience since they enable fast and useful responses. Support requests and calls from customers are always answered regularly with the possibilities that team collaboration features create. In this way, sustainable customer satisfaction is provided, and accordingly, the growth of the business.
Juphy’s Specific Features for Customer Service
- Single dashboard
- Automation rules
- Canned responses
- Social monitoring
Juphy’s Specific Features for Customer Support
- Performance reports
- Canned responses
- Categorization and keyword classification
- Social listening and monitoring on social media
- Real-time team collaboration
- White label help desk
- Unified inbox for teams
It is way easier to provide customer service and customer support with Juphy’s numerous features. Good management is the route for improving customer satisfaction and having good management operations, but you need an efficient help tool. Juphy provides that effective management area where you can take customer satisfaction to the next level. You can take control of your business thanks to its features. If you also want to easily manage your customer service and customer support teams with Juphy, you can contact us on our website.
