Uncovering The Difference Between Customer Service and Customer Experience

Something deeper than what I'm presenting today. I do offer a 30-minute complimentary coaching session. So, go ahead and book time that works for you on my online calendar. The link is going to be in the show notes. So, go ahead, click that and just book 30 minutes. What the heck! We can have a conversation, see where you're at. Likewise, if you're a member of an association, or you have an upcoming event, or you have an intact team that you want to do some training with, feel free to reach out. Let's have a discussion. Let's see how maybe we can work together. My objective always is to serve. At the very least, if you haven't done so yet, go ahead and subscribe to this podcast. Do so now. If you ring the bell, you'll get notified whenever I bring you fresh new content. Before a big meeting, you might decide to get yourself a pack of gum to erase that onion that you were consuming in the lunchtime salad. You pull up to a convenience store. You go in. You find the gum you want. You pay for it. And 90 seconds later, you are back in your car chewing happily knowing full well you're not going to offend anybody with your onion breath. I'd like to know from you our Question of the Day. So, what part of that story had to do with customer service? And what part of that story referred to customer experience? Interesting question, huh? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Why don't you go ahead and share this episode on your favorite platform and hashtag the post again with the hashtag #ExperienceLeadership. I'd love for you to be part of this conversation. I'm really looking for what are your opinions about That little story about buying gum about when it comes down to your perception of what customer service is versus customer experience. For years, I was always training customer service, customer service, customer service all the time. That's what people wanted to learn. In my book, I tell a story of a skiing trip I took ages ago and compared it to the first time I saw a live theater production. It was the first time I had ever really considered experience expectation within the context of both customer service and customer experience. It's a great comparison. And I hope you do pick up a copy of Lights! Camera! Action! and take a look at those stories. Today, my hope is to provide some clarity between customer service and customer experience. Now, I know you're probably watching this thinking, but Marc, I just have to give the best service possible to give my customers or the guests the best experience. And I have to say, oh really? Ages ago, I went into a donair shop.

What?

I was craving a donair. As I was driving, I saw this rather busy building with a sign that said, the best donair in Edmonton. What I meant by a busy building is that they had signs everywhere. The windows had the laminates on them with all the graphics. They had different menu items posted on the side of the building, things that were on sale. Those laminates on the windows, I understand them in principle. But man, do they make a building really busy. Those are the laminates that you can see. You can't see inside the store. But once you're inside, you can see out. Great, great kind of theory. But all too often, it is just like putting up a bulletin board on the side of your building. It was the signage equivalent to a building having Tourette's. There were just so many things going on all at the same time, just yelling at you. And of course, it had the Prerequisite flashing open sign on you the whole time. The sign is a constant. It's like really yelling at your customers.

We're open!

We're open!

We're open! We're open!

Anyway, I pulled up and I went inside. They had the bells on the door. You know that when you open the door, it startles you because it rings so loudly just above your head? Got in there and right away, I took a look around. Have you ever been in a place and right away, it just looks sketchy? That's how this felt. I walked in and it had tile floors, kind of the industrial tile floor, like laminate floors, right? And it had tables everywhere. It was set up It looked like it would have been set up in a shopping mall. They had a food counter in front. And then, in front of the food counter were all these tables scattered all over the place. As I walked into my right, there was a bunch of booths. And the booth at the far right of the room as I walked in was obviously the office. There was a calculator there. There were cigarettes there. Papers strewn all over the place. Obviously, it's not a place for the customers. And the booth right next to that towards the door must have been the staff room because there were sweaters there. There was a cell phone sitting on the table. There was just drink cups with a dirty straw in it. It was just there. And then over to the side before you had the counter in front of us. And just over to the side, there was this humming, constant humming. There was a Coke fridge.

Oh my God!

stacked to the hilt with all sorts of canned drinks and plastic bottles and that sort of thing. And it was just humming along happily. And then, right next to it was a whole stack of crates of different pop and that sort of thing that goes into the fridge. Some of it looked like if you pulled onto it, it'd be like a game of Jenga. You just didn't know where it was going. As I looked at the counter, I'm looking around and I realized that you're probably looking at me going, Marc, Get away! Run away! And I was tempted. I'm standing in the doorway taking all this in, looking at the ceiling tiles that have watermarks on it and the air conditioning duct that just had this whole big dust thing around it. And ultimately, I should have just backed out and left. But I had a craving. And I thought, what the heck? I'm from Montreal. And Montreal, when you see these dive locations, Sometimes, they have really great food. But this one was a little different. This one was a little bit different. Along the counter on the right top right-hand side of the counter where you walked in was a big sign that says, Order Here. So, I walked up to the counter under the sign that said, Order Here. I grabbed a plastic tray and some plastic cutlery. Then, a middle-aged lady came out and she greeted me and asked me what I wanted. So, I'm looking at the menu board. I'm like, um, What do you want? I will have a large donair. You want cheese on that? No, no, no thanks. You want fries? It comes with fries. Sure, okay, thanks. She processed my sale. Then, she went to work. And I took my tray and I watched her work as she took out this knife. The knife must have been a good 2 feet long. It must have been anywhere between 18 and 24 inches. And She went to work on the meat spit. Now, if you've ever had doner, the meat is put onto a large spit laterally. And she just took her little tray that catches the meat and she just went to work on that meatloaf essentially, slicing it like so thin and with absolute surgical precision. She took the hot pita from the steamer. She placed the freshly cut meat Into the pita. And then, she signaled me all the condiments that they had. I chose onions, tomatoes, lettuce, and of course, tzatziki sauce. I'm not the one for the sweet donair sauce. That's not me. The tzatziki sauce. And the way she just manipulated the whole sandwich, she just like put the meat and she folded it all so nicely. And it's almost like it has wax paper and then, it's almost like an aluminum foil on the outside. And she wrapped this whole thing up so tightly and she stuck it into a plastic bag that just was big enough to fit the donair. And voilà! And I thought to myself, how can she be so amazing at making my lunch yet miss the essentials to making the store feel inviting to guests? I have to say, I sat down at the rickety tables, almost like the fast food tables with a chair. And I sat there watching what she was doing as she was working and opened up this donair. I have to say, it was amazing. The din-din was so good. But even though the service I received was amazing, I have to say that overall, the experience was not. So, I'd like to delve a little bit into the customer experience journey. And we'll do that right after this.

When the spotlight shines on your business, are customers applauding or yawning? In other words, how is your business performing? Make your business a star With a new book, Lights! Camera! Action!, Business Operational Excellence Through the Lens of Live Theater by Marc Haine. Marc uses his business and acting experience to help you see your business like a live show so you can create a performance your customers will never forget. Buy Lights! Camera! Action! today at your favorite online retailer or directly at marchaine.com.

Welcome back. I believe that our customers, our clients, or our guests, whatever you like to call them, come on a journey with us. And on this journey, they hit several different milestones. How we serve them and meet their expectations along this journey As they reach each of the milestones, we'll denote if they stay on the journey with us or they plunge into what I like to call the pool of the tainted. In a previous episode, I talked about the problem with prospects. That is the first point of contact. The prospects know about you before you even know they exist. If I hadn't been hungry and craving a donair, I would never have— you know what? I probably would have driven right past that store and I wouldn't have even given it a second thought. It just happened at the time that I was thinking donair. I was thinking of being right and then I saw the donair shop. When a person decides to do business with us, they're making that decision. They become— they go from being a prospect. And if you haven't watched that episode, it is It's called The Problem with Prospects. And it talks a lot about how people find us and the impressions and the promises that we make so that they become a new customer. But when they do become that new customer, they become a newbie. They're trusting us. They're trusting us to deliver on our promise that we gave them when they were a prospect. And between you and me, the most engaged that any customer will ever be is when They are giving you their money. Because let's face it, there's that whole adage about people will make the decision to buy emotionally and then they'll justify it logically. So, when they make that emotional connection with you to actually give you their money, that is the most engaged you will ever be. And it provides so much opportunity that I find that most businesses skip. After that, If you deliver on your promise, our customers evolve into takers. Now, a taker is very selfish. It's all about them. They want what you have and they only care about themselves. And they only care what you can do for them. And it's unfortunate because that is our natural thing when we first do it. I mean, we come to the store when we talked about buying bubble gum or Chewing gum. Your motivation for going into the store is because I need gum. You don't care about anything else. You go and you buy the gum and you leave. That's because all you're thinking about is your needs as a customer. And a lot of times, especially in hospitality, a lot of times I'll have servers coming to me or chefs coming to me saying, doesn't the customer care? Don't they understand how busy we are? And it's like, you know what?

They don't care.

They don't. When they become a new customer, they get into this taker mode. And it's all about fulfilling their needs. They want— you have to satisfy their needs. You have to answer the core questions at this level in order for them to move forward. And the taker is very selfish. They're playing on the WIIFM. What's in it for me? Right? That's why they came to you. Because that at the end of it, when you did all the assets that support the prospects at the beginning, you're telling the prospects, this is what I can do to serve you. This is what I can do to help you. This is how I can solve your problem. So, when they come into you, that's what they want to see. And if you can answer those core questions and fulfill those needs of the taker, They— you build up enough trust that they become an active participant in your business. This is a magical part of being an active participant because this is the level where your customers start taking a vested interest in you. Yes, they're still thinking about themselves. But now, this other thing is sneaking into their objectives and into the conscious. This is the point where they know, like, and trust you. And so, they might be doing things like posting pictures on social media. They might be referring and recommending you to other people. It is a magical time when that balance of self-fulfillment versus how can I serve starts coming into a foray. And really, if we think about the taker being, this is all about me, all about me, all about me. And then, they become an active participant. That comes down a little bit. And the How can I serve comes up. And if you take good care of them here, then they become your brand ambassador. And this is just a magical thing. Ask anybody who's an Apple fan or Disney, right? When you have the— when you are able to meet the experience expectation at the different milestones, this brand ambassador is absolute gold for you. This is where loyalty reigns. This is the point where they share you with the world. You are part of them. They almost tie identity to associating with your brand. And your ambassadors are absolute gold. But this journey is so fragile. This journey going from prospect all the way up to ambassador is really, really tenuous. You see, their needs are different at each milestone. The questions that you need to answer for them is different at each milestone. You can't treat customers the same way as a brand new customer as they are as an active participant or an ambassador. That's like saying you treat your 2-year employee the same as you would do a brand new hire, right? A brand new hire, you have to do orientation. You have to do onboarding. You have to do a little handholding. But a 2-year employee, you don't have to do that anymore. But think of your customers in that realm that when they've gone through this, their needs are entirely different. If you don't meet those needs, if you can't take that customer on the journey, They end up where most of your customers are right now. And I'm telling you, 68% of your customers right now are in the pool of the tainted. The pool of the tainted is where people fall when they're walking this tightrope from prospect to ambassador. If you don't deliver on the promise that you have, if you let them down and don't service them properly, if you don't give them the kind of experience that they need at each one of these milestones, They fall off this tightrope into the pool of the tainted. This pool of tainted is huge because it contains everybody who fell off at the newbie stage, at the taking stage, at the active participant stage, and at the ambassador stage. And the pool of the tainted itself is really a precarious place because inside this pool, you have people just treading water. They're the people who fell into the pool because you let them down a little bit. And they don't know anymore. They're not really engaged with you. But really, at the end of the day, it's because you're irrelevant. They could shop with you or they can go somewhere else, right? It's really, you've done nothing for me, so... And those people are there treading water, waiting to be saved. But you also in the pool have the actively disengaged. Somewhere, the trust was lost and they are not happy. After a transaction with you, they might go home and play keyboard warrior, slamming your business and the experience they had with you. They will tell everybody. What is that saying that if somebody likes your service, they might tell 3 people. But if they hated what you did for them, 10. They'll tell 10. Right? And what makes the pool of the tainted so precarious is that they hang out here for a little bit. They'll tread water for a little bit. But they have only 2 directions to go. After a while, they leave. Now, when they are the cancer to your business, when these are the keyboard warriors who are constantly slamming you and badmouthing you, and when they're gone, it's like, oh, thank goodness they're gone. But you've lost them. When people leave, they're gone. And when they're gone, they're almost next to impossible to get back. It's not impossible. But you have to do a lot to get them back when they're that tainted that they decide, you know what? I'm not going to play this game anymore. There's the door. I'm taking the door. But if you understand that there are a lot of water treaders, In your pool, people who are just on that surface, you could save them. You could address their needs and encourage them to come back. But you have to be forewarned. There's a big challenge with this. When you pull people out of the pool of the tainted, when they come back to you, it doesn't matter where they were on their journey before. When they come back, they're coming back. As a taker. They're coming back because you've made a new promise or you've made a revised promise. And so, they're coming back. But the onus is on you to build that trust. They're only coming back to the taker milestone. So, you have to deliver in that taking milestones. You then, once you have them back into the taker milestone, you then have to build trust all over again. If you want them to evolve, keeping them in the taker phase is not going to keep them for long. They'll keep taking. But I think as human beings, we want to belong somewhere. We want to be able to be proud of our decisions. We want to be relevant to the world. And so, you need to move people from this taker phase to this active participant phase. And of course, you need to invest in them if you want to involve Evolve them into becoming your brand ambassador. So, this is a lot to take in, isn't it? It's like, welcome to the customer experience soap opera. So, how does this all come into play with our core question about customer experience versus customer service? That's what we're going to be talking about right after this.

When you're delivering an important speech to a huge audience, it's easy to lose your place or go way over time. Give yourself an advantage with the Pro Speaker Presentation Speech Timer app. No more checking your watch or calling for time. The Pro Speaker Presentation Speech Timer app keeps you on track with easy-to-see timers, even changing color for visual prompts during your speech. And you can set audio cues to practice or set it to vibrate so you don't even have to look. Be the pro you know you are. Download the app at speakerpresentationtimer.com.

Welcome back! I hope you're finding value in today's episode. I do encourage you if I lost you anywhere along the way, I encourage you to go back and review the recording as well. And again, if you want more clarification on this, please feel free to reach out. I'm more than happy to take 30 minutes with you. As you can probably tell, I'm super passionate about this topic. I'd just like to put it out there that if you belong to an association or a company and that you feel that you can use this information, maybe you have a conference or a leadership retreat coming up and you'd like to delve into this concept a little bit deeper. We could workshop this. We could do this as a learning opportunity for your teams or for the association. Drop me a line and let's connect. I'd love to explore how I could work with you. So, we are answering the question about the difference between customer service and customer experience. So, we've gone through this idea of that people are on this track with us. At the core, at each of the experience journey milestones, we have a set of expectations. Those expectations include levels of service that we provide. Our customer service. But what is really challenging according to a recent survey, which by the way is only slightly different than when I did my research back in 2005. There's a report that says that 80% of companies claim they are offering outstanding customer service. But only 8% of the surveyed customers are actually satisfied. Doesn't that blow your mind? I mean, that's so scary. It means as business operators, our actual measurement to how well we are doing is only measured by our intent to give great service. We have it on the wall as part of our mission statement. We train our staff to give the very best service. But that makes us delusional. I hate to say it. It really does. Because if it's not clear by now, customer service is a component of customer experience. Customer service is the act of fulfilling the needs and expectations of our customers through each of their experience journey milestones. That's what makes us delusional because our service definition is that we treat every customer the same every time. To the customer, we seem to be like 10-second Tom in the movie 50 First Dates. This is where Tom greets everybody and he says, hi, I'm Tom. What's your name? And no matter where the conversation goes, 10 seconds later, he says again, hi, I'm Tom. What's your name? After a while, people stop replying to 10 Second Tom because the conversation goes nowhere. And that's the same as your customers. Like, I hope this makes sense. In essence, customer service is measured by how well we service the needs of our customers where they are in their journey. It is a big part of customer experience. But it's not customer experience. You see, when we go through like 10 Second Tom, we're treating everybody the same no matter where they are on their journey. But you can't treat them the same. You can't treat a brand new customer the way you can, the way you train, or the way you train, the way you deal with an active participant. Their needs are completely different. A new customer doesn't know you. They're testing the water. Their toe is in the water. They're trying to test to see, are you delivering on your promise? Whereas an active participant already trusts you. The thing is if you don't trust, if you don't deal with them like they're an active participant, they fall off. The definition of customer experience is far broader and takes the whole experience into account. It's the experiences that really at the end of the day meet, exceed, or quash expectations. Will define those experience— will define the experiences. I started our session today talking about buying gum. In and out in 90 seconds. Pretty good, huh? A lot of businesses would say, hey, we're right on par. That's great. That's great service. We got people in. We got people out.

Great!

But the whole experience was absolutely Forgettable. I can't even remember what store it was. They met my basic need. Find gum, buy gum, leave. That's it. As a new customer, aside from the find gum, buy gum, and leave, nothing about the relationship was about me, the newbie. So, I didn't progress any further with them. Now, you might be looking at me and saying, but Marc, our mission is to provide friendly, efficient service to all our customers. Which is fine. But it's making you unforgettable. I mean, I could say the same thing about Holiday Inn. Great properties, clean, efficient. They have great check-ins, nice efficient check-ins.

process.

They have nice-sized rooms. The rooms are clean. They meet my basic expectation. But it's forgettable. Sorry, Holiday Inn. Contrast that with the Fairmont Banff Springs. Pull up in my car. Welcome, Mr. Haine! How are you doing today? How did he know? Did he track my license plate? Like, I don't understand how they knew as soon as I pulled up. Get out of the car and it's like, if you'd leave everything here with us, I'll send it up to your room. Carl is waiting for you inside. Who the heck is Carl? I walk in. There's lineups all over the place. The porter or the concierge walks up and he says, oh, Carl is waiting for you just over there, pointing me to the front desk clerk.

What?

Turns out because I use the valet, I get to go in a different line. So, what is the difference? The difference is that fast and efficient is transactional. The focus on personalization in the Fairmont example is relational. Did you get that? Transactional versus relational. That's the difference. It's the difference between, oh yeah, you can find what you're looking for in aisle 16. And, sure, I'll show you where it is. Come to me. It's in aisle 16. Come with me. So, what are you working on? Transactional versus relational. Is the big difference. Being relational means you're creating a relationship with your clients. You're taking interest in your clients and you make them part of the overall experience. Now, I argue that being memorable is not about juggling 5 balls while you're riding a unicycle through an obstacle course, whistling the national anthem while your trained dogs dressed in tutus reenact scenes from Les Misérables. Although, that would be pretty memorable. Being memorable is about understanding the experience expectation of each of the journey milestones and constantly investing in the know, like, and trust factor with your guest and for your guest. I'd even argue that of the 3, trust is the biggie. As I wrap up, I just want to outline that experience is all about the whole experience, including all the actual customer touch points within your business. The touch point within your business is such an important way of being able to seed the feedback that people have researched about you, especially from the prospecting phase. What people see on your website, what they see in your parking lot, what they see in your signage, how they look at your business. This all forms an overall experience expectation of what people can expect from you. If you're interested, I have a free Customer Touchpoint Assessment that you can download for free. It's basically a checklist that allows you to view your business through your customer's eyes. Then, armed with that information, you can start uncovering your customer's journey with you using the Touchpoint Assessment. You can start questioning each touchpoint and saying, how does a newbie look at this? How does an active participant? How does my ambassadors look at this? I hope that this has been helpful for you. If you have some questions about our topic today or you'd like to brainstorm some aspect of your business, feel free to click the calendar link in the show notes for a complimentary 30-minute session with me. Ultimately, I live to serve. I'm one of those sad, sad souls that like to give to the people. If you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to subscribe to this podcast. And please share this episode with your network, with people you know who could use it. I know personally, I've gone into businesses where, boy, I wish they understood this. I really do. And so, I'm sure that you have people in your life that could see value in this topic. The bottom line is applying what we learned today will be the magic for your business. Even bigger if you apply these concepts to all your stakeholders. Because this whole thing with experience expectation and journey, the journey mapping aspect of it, the experience journey that people take with you is the same whether they're your employees, your suppliers, or anyone else you do business with. In any kind of capacity. If you can fulfill those things with your suppliers, with your employees, with your customers, with your landlord, whoever it is that you do business with, you will rock your world with the most amazing loyal brand ambassadors. Thank you so much for joining me today. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe. Stay healthy. And dare to be the exception.