The Difference Between Customer Success and Customer Support

Customer Success is a new phenomenon, Several companies club it with customer support.

Businesses need good sales and support teams to be successful. But when it comes to the specifics of working with customers, you’ll see a wide variety of terms thrown around.

Phrases such as “customer care, customer support, and after-sales service” are all frequently used, but there are a few terms that truly stand out in their meaning (despite the confusion surrounding them).

The terms, “customer support and customer success” are among some of the most commonly used phrases in the industry.

Yet, although they all seem like synonyms, they really have different meanings and both play critical roles within the customer relationship cycle and overall experience.

Given that the success of your business comes down to the relationship between you and the customer, how your prospects view your business is of utmost importance.

Major Differences Between Customer Support and Customer Success

Customer Support	Customer Success
Customer Satisfaction: Working on satisfying the customer after something has already dissatisfied them.	Customer Value: Provides value to the customer to get the best value out of the produce.
Conflict Resolution: Resolves conflicts via SMS, Email or Chat.	Outcome-Driven: Helps customer to achieve their desired goals.
Responsive: Acts only when an issue occurs.	Proactive: Acts on it beforehand
Short Term Value: Solves each problem separately as they arise.	Longtime Value: Create a system/ process to help customers through the entire life cycle.
Single Focused: Helps customers on particular issues.	Multi Focused: Helps customers in all the aspects.

Why Do You Need A Customer Success Strategy?

Acquiring new customers has become a difficult task. Investing in customer success is crucial to keep your existing customers happy.

In fact, more than 90% of businesses have a solid customer success team. See, happy customers are your armor.

They spread the word for you, without even you realizing it. Learn more about how you can make your customers and employees happy with effective communication.

Most successful and emerging companies are investing in customer success. A lead management system will also help you keep track of your prospects.

Establishing, developing, and building relationships with your customers help your business to have a brand identity.

A customer success strategy is a holistic and proactive approach. It helps them get value out of their purchase and share feedback with you.

More importantly, it reduces churn rates, improves renewal, and strengthens customer loyalty. Therefore, it boosts your revenue.

Why A Customer Support Strategy Is Needed?

A customer support strategy helps your customer overcome an issue they’re experiencing while interacting with your company.

It might also help them find ways to better utilize your product or services. But it obviously leaves room for some improvements.

Only focusing on resolving customer issues when they arise is not the perfect solution.

Here, customer success plays a vital role in taking your relationship a step further. It also drives long term success and engagement.

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Customer Support

The customer support team helps in increasing a customer’s overall satisfaction with the product or service.

Concept of “Customer Support” is very simple. Basically, you as a company provide a one-off service to a customer as needed.

A customer service team often works with simple problems, such as instructing a customer on how to access a software feature.

These problems can be more complicated especially in the B2B (business-to-business) industry, sometimes taking multiple experts across different departments to solve.

The “customer service” term is popular among manufacturing industries & e-commerce companies.

Customer Success

The customer success team want to ensure you use a product/service correctly.

However, they make sure you receive the maximum value from the product or service you’ve purchased.

86% of buyers are willing to pay more for better customer experience.

A customer success team focuses on increasing the lifetime value by strengthening and deepening client relationships and interaction between the customer and the product/service.

This team manages the relationship that the customers have with your business.

They own the entire relationship and are a knowledgeable consultant for customers to contact so their issues or concerns are accurately conveyed internally.

How Can You Help Your Customers Succeed?

Since every business is different, you can mix and match these tips or follow some of them and ensure your strategy meets the requirements as per the situation.

Guide your team for the customer success program. Modify your plan as your business scales. The requirements of your customers might change over time as your product features evolve or as your services grow.
Anticipate the questions of your customers. Empower them with videos, presentations, and demos.
Onboard customers and get them acquainted with your product or service. Answer every question proactively.
Communicate with other departments to understand and target specific pain points that the customers have.

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Conclusion

In short, while “customer service, help desk, after-sales service” do have some similarities, they are quite different both in the industries used and how they relate to customers.

“Customer success”, which is often mixed with these terms, is not really a synonym and instead takes a step back from directly resolving problems and focus more on the overall business relationship with the customer.