Customer Service and Technical Support both are considered to be the pillars of communication of an organization that helps to serve the customers. While many still confuse them to be the same thing, there are some significant differences between these two avenues which help to address different customer situations. Knowing the differences between these two can help to improve your strategies for your business and customer relationships. Let’s take a better look!
What is Customer Service?
Customer service is a diversified set of practices that are designed to improve interactions between the company and the customers. It mainly helps to conduct the entire purchasing process, starting from the pre-purchase phase to the post-purchase phase. It is present in every single touch point that takes place between a single customer and the business. As a result, the best practices of customer service can be taught to all employees of a company interaction with the customer could be needed at any point of the business operations. The key lies in securing a pleasant and convenient interaction between the business and customers.
What is Technical Support?
Technical support refers to the company assistance that is provided to a customer or a user who needs help with a technical service or a product. It can be a hardware device or a software tool that is available for the users and at any point of their usage, a user can ask technical support for quick resolutions for the occurred problem. Technical support is available for everyone but it is only provided for the ones who request it.
Technical support professionals are highly skillful and trained to understand the ins and outs of hardware and software products offered by the company. They can offer assistance around the clock to let customers have effective solutions.
What are the Differences between Customer Service and Technical Support
The practices of Customer Services seek to guarantee that every single interaction that takes place between a customer and the business is a pleasant one. On the other hand, Technical Support refers to the assistance that is required by customers when they find an issue with a technical product or a service. Although these two avenues are technically different from each other, many people confuse it as Technical Support representatives need to have good Customer Service skills to ace their job.
Any staff or employee of the company who would have direct interactions with the customers must acquire good Customer Service skills for communication. Starting from sales staff, and customer support to accountants and marketers; everyone needs to have good communication skills. Similarly, offering effective Technical Support to your customers is also a part of the company’s overall Customer Service Strategy.
Good Technical Support means listening to customers’ problems to fix them while Customer Service Representatives listen with empathy to understand the problems of customers with their perceptions. Customer service cannot fix the problem but can recommend effective solutions.
Then, What is Customer Support? How is it Different from Technical Support?
Now, that is a good question! Customer Support is also often mistakenly considered with Customer Service. However, there are a handful of differences. While both elements are perhaps fundamentally similar, they help to serve different purposes.
Customer support seeks to assist the customers with any kind of problem that they have on the business website whether it is regarding making a special purchase or updating their payment method. It is non-technical. However, Technical Support could be considered as a kind of Customer Support that is specially designed to empower everyone.
Now, that you are aware of both sides, it is time to improve your business's Customer Service and Technical Support.
