Customer Service vs. Customer Engagement - Which one do you need?

What is the difference between customer service and customer engagement?

These two terms may sound similar but they are actually very different. Both leave a huge mark on your customers and both are critical to driving the lifetime value of your brand. These critical pillars of business can elevate your company and can change your everyday customer into a lifelong promoter. 

So what is the difference between customer service and customer engagement?

Customer service is there to help answer your customers' questions. These could be questions related to your products, billing, shipping, or overall clarification. Customer engagement is a customer's overall impression of interacting with your brand. From when they first discovered you, to when they bought from you, and long after into post-purchase.

Customer service is just a small piece of customer engagement. Customer service is a reactionary department that is initiated by the customer. Some key stats that customer service teams focus on are average response times and the messaging that the customer service member was communicating. While a customer engagement team would focus on the net promoter score and stats that accumulate to every portion of that customer's journey. 

Ways to increase customer engagement throughout your business.

There are many different periods of your customer's journey. Focusing on increasing your customer satisfaction is important for creating a lifelong customer. Key tools and methods can help increase your customer's overall satisfaction with your brand.

Discovery and Pre-Purchase:

The discovery and pre-purchase phases are where your customers will have their first touch points with you. Like in face-to-face meetings you want to make a good first impression. Touchpoints in the discovery phase include your landing pages, the home page, reviews, friend recommendations, social media, awareness advertising, and your product itself.

Creating LTV Through the Post-Purchase Experience:

Your customers are now buying your products, now what? Many companies shift focus back to finding and converting new customers - we refer to these businesses as transactional; they are always looking for new customers to convert, overlooking the benefits of repeat purchases from existing customers.

Companies that focus solely on new customers without building a strategy for increasing brand loyalty have higher customer acquisition costs (CACs) and lower lifetime values (LTVs). Knowing that high CACs and low LTVs make it almost impossible for brands to efficiently grow, Givego has created a solution for any brand - big or small - to focus on increasing revenue per customer.

So how can small teams and overworked teams still be able to create a great post-purchase experience?

Our pick is Givego. Givego allows you to offer your customers a free coaching session to connect with an Expert in a sport or activity that they bought your product for. You can offer coaching to your customers from World Champions, Professional Athletes, and Professional Coaches. The best part is that Givego offers a free Shopify Integration that seamlessly integrates into your checkout process. After that let Givego do the rest. 

Companies that focus on their customer engagement tend to outperform their competitors who cut costs on this front. Providing great customer service is just one part of your overall customer engagement. No matter the size or stage, customer engagement is a vital part of any business.