Perfect CX Series Part 3— Service Experience
Customer Experience is a combination of multiple experiences and each of these is interdependent and interlinked. As we discussed in our previous blog, Product Experience is an important part of CX for brands that deal in products.
However, not all brands are based on tangible products to provide for a remarkable customer experience. Some brands are partially or fully dependent on services.
Services, unlike products, are intangible, inseparable, variable, and quickly perishable. And to be able to enhance CX for a service-providing firm, it is necessary to understand and prioritize Service Experience.
In this blog we shall dig deeper into understanding Service Experience or SX, how it is different from Product Experience, why it matters to customers, the major roadblocks, and end with the classic example of American Express.
Let’s begin!
What is Service Experience?
Service Experience is the overall experience derived by a customer while participating in the service. For instance, the experience you derive from your visit to a doctor’s clinic, a salon, a bank, or a restaurant, etc.
Service Experience is also generated when services are used to complement products. For instance when you get free maintenance on your car for the warranty period. In this case, SX is complementary to PX and is required for developing long-term relationships.
However, Service Experience differs from Product Experience in some ways…
How is Service Experience different from Product Experience?
For any service to be delivered, an important characteristic is the involvement of the customer. Unlike products that can be ordered from anywhere, no service can be delivered without customer participation. It means that service demands greater efforts on part of the customer than in products.
For instance, when you visit a salon, you are required to invest time and be involved while the service is being provided. You are the work in progress and you will be converted into the final product. You are not only required to make choices but your presence is essential for the entire service to happen in the first place.
And this service is irreversible. Again, you can judge its quality only after it has been delivered unlike in products where you can touch and feel or use it to understand the quality. You cannot form opinions beforehand in case of services.
Thus, while in PX you can work on features to improve the experience, service itself is an experience and needs a deeper understanding of the customer to deliver a highly personalized experience.
So, it becomes very important for firms to know what matters to the customers when it comes to services.
What Matters to Customers?
Customers today have high expectations from brands for their service experience. They want their service to be quick, responsive, and personalized. They want to be understood by the service provider.
They want to be heard. They hate it when they are being dictated jargons by the service provider. They feel more attached and comfortable when their opinion matters in the service. They have to participate in service and so they demand to be as much involved.
That is why, around 96% of customers around the globe attribute service experience to be an important factor that affects their brand loyalty, according to Microsoft.
If customers have a good experience while being served they are bound to return as it is a greater effort on their part to switch providers and find the one who would understand their needs. And so, 52% of customers won’t even mind paying a little extra to brands that provided a positive service experience, according to Zendesk.
Thus, knowing your customer and connecting with them at the root level is necessary for a good Service Experience. And this is not an easy task. It has some major hurdles…
The Major SX Roadblocks
Major difficulties in creating a remarkable SX are:
- Tangibilizing the intangible: A good deal of SX depends on the tangible elements of the service like the equipment in a hospital, the ambiance of a restaurant, products used by a make-up artist, etc.
- Involvement of service provider: Service requires involvement from both the customer and the provider. Thus, the behavior of the representative would highly impact the SX. According to Salesforce, the awareness of sales representatives during interaction is important to 70% of customers.
- SX impact on PX: When services are used to enhance PX, poor after-sales service can highly ruin the impact of PX and may result in the deterioration of the brand image. About 47% of customers switch brands due to poor customer service irrespective of the product quality, according to Microsoft.
- Personalization: Every customer is different and unlike standardized products, services are required to be tailored to specific customer requirements. These requirements can be very dynamic and meeting such demands can be very difficult.
Despite these difficulties, AmEx has found a way to complement its products with an amazing service experience. Here’s how they do it…
American Express: The Classic SX Case
AmEx is the best example to quote for understanding Service Experience as it offers both products as well as supportive services. The most popular services of American Express include security services like Online PIN, EMV Chip Card Payments, Tokenization service, SafeKey, VerifyIt, etc.
Its acceptance solutions include services like worldwide cash access, contactless payments in transit, Mobile POS, QR code payments, all-in-one consistent checkout, etc. All these services are available exclusively for the AmEx Card Members, adding to their product experience.
Image: Security Services by American Express.
Apart from these product related standardized services, AmEx also goes out of the way to “serve” their customers in every which way possible. This gesture develops a long-term customer relationship. Raymond Joabar, EVP, Global Servicing Network, American Express Company discusses with Forbes an instance where AmEx served a customer far from home.
Once, an Argentine card member informed AmEx of a situation where his daughter was traveling to India and running very low on cash. He wondered if AmEx could help in any way. And it did! One of their employees was traveling to Gurgaon the same night.
So, she took a new card with her to India and arranged a courier to securely deliver it to the daughter. She also stayed in touch with the family to guide them on the new card. Thus, the employee chose to not leave the customer high and dry, worked even off-hours to serve them, and made their service experience memorable.
Conclusion
To sum it up, services are much more difficult to deal with as compared to products. A good service experience can engage customers speedily. But a slight mistake can lose them forever. Thus, Service Experience is important for both PX and CX. And a brand that has leveraged it, will succeed in its CX game. But the job is not done here.
As actively involved they are in boosting their product and service experience, brands must also become super active in redressing grievances and solving issues. This calls for our next type of CX called Contact Center Experience. We shall discuss this concept in much detail in our upcoming blog for the series. Till then, keep reading for tips on how to revamp your CX!
In the other parts of this series, we will learn more about each of the six varied types of experiences forming Customer Experience
