Services that are provided to help customers to make constructive and correct use of a product can be defined as customer support while as helping customers to solve the technical problems of their electronic devices is known as technical support.
There are significant roles of both customer service as well as technical support in organizations but there are important differences between the two. The focus of the customer service is on the experience of the customer while as the focus of technical support is on solving a technical issue that the customer is facing with your product.
Customer Service And Technical Support Have Different Goals
Since the main target of the technical support is to solve any technical problem, therefore these incidents are either perceived or there are actual deficiencies with the product that the customer seeks to resolve. It necessitates that the technical support representative should be friendly, supportive and determined enough to understand what is not functioning properly and try to resolve the problem quickly. It can be said that the ultimate measure of success is that the customer doesn’t have to contact support again.
A different approach is taken by customer service. The focus of customer service is on the experience of the customer. The services provided by customer service does not have to be technical in nature.
Representatives Listen To Customers For Different Purposes
The focus of the technical support representative is to resolve the issue of a customer as quickly as possible. They listen to fix. Technical support representative listens to symptoms, try to understand the problem and offer a fix quickly.
The focus of customer service is to listen with empathy. They listen not to fix but to recommend. They put themselves in the “shoes” of the customer and figure out what the customer wants to achieve.
Representatives Have a Different Perspective on the Product
There is also a difference in perspective between the two. For instance, if you contact technical support for an error in your word processor, or regarding some plugin that isn’t working, they will most certainly help you to fix it. But if you want some help in writing a paper, then technical support won’t be able to do much about it. Here comes the customer service, which will try to understand what you want and help you achieve it. Even if they could not give you a solution right away, they will refer you to the right resources so that you will get the solution of your problem eventually.
Good Customer Experience = Customer Comfort
Customer experience is customer comfort. It gives an impression to the customer that the money and time that they have invested in a product or service is worth the value received. The following are some of the steps that can be taken to increase customer comfort.
Empathy – Support representatives need to provide the customer with a sense of understanding. The customer should feel like the representative is someone who understands the problem through their perspective. It is better if representatives have sufficient amount of knowledge about the industry they are supporting
Competence – The representatives providing any type of support must know the product inside and out. In case representatives don’t have the answer to a question, it is better to simply admit it rather than pretending to know the answer or fumbling through a support call.
Friendliness – Representatives must be welcoming and friendly. They should be able to resolve the issue of customers in a friendly way.
Communication – Another significant aspect of comfort is communication. There are four things that representatives should make sure that the customer knows: the cost of support, that work that is going on to address their issue, what will you be working on next, and the current ETA for completion of work.
Offer of Assistance – Never guess or assume what the customer would want. Always ask the customer what kind of help do they want.
