1. Customer Service and Customer Experience: What’s the Difference?

EPISODE 1 OF WHAT WOULD THEY DO? THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PODCAST FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS

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In this first episode of ‘What Would They Do?’, we kick things off by answering the important question:

What is the difference between Customer Service and Customer Experience.

So often, mixed up and misunderstood, we explore the role each aspect plays in your customer journey as well as the bigger goals each of them can achieve within your online business.

What we cover:

How Listeners Can Get Involved – Encouraging participation by inviting real questions from business owners who want practical, strategic advice tailored to their challenges.

The Power of Customer Experience – Why customer experience is more than just good customer service and how it directly impacts sales, brand loyalty, and long-term success.

Making Sales Feel Natural – How to create a buying journey that doesn’t feel pushy but instead builds trust and encourages customers to say “yes” effortlessly.

Soundbites:

“The difference between customer service and customer experience is pretty simple when you break it down. Customer service delivers on a promise. People purchase your offer and you deliver it. Whereas customer experience is being one step ahead at all times. Customer experience is about anticipating your audience’s next move, their next purchase, their next question or objection. And being one step ahead is going to get you to stand out. It’s going to create brand loyalty and it’s going to have your audience pay attention to everything you have to say.”

“Small businesses and online businesses like you have an unfair advantage when it comes to customer experience. While corporates might have fancy data warehouses, lavish budgets and any tech tool imaginable, it’s really much harder to infuse personal touches, create a thriving, engaged community and lead with authenticity.”

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Episode Transcript:

 Hello, and welcome to this official first episode of what would they do? I am super excited to be here, super excited to have you tune in and even more excited because this podcast was in the making for close to a year. It was one of those projects that was super close to my heart and felt like huge and super impactful.

I was overthinking things, I overcomplicated things and ultimately procrastinated before finally taking action. And I’m so glad it’s happening. I put myself out there. I set myself a launch date and here we are. It is happening and I cannot wait to go on this podcast journey with you, hopefully supporting you to a remarkable customer experience for your small online business. 

Let me start with a quick reminder of this interactive podcast format. Basically what would they do is your opportunity, your stage, your platform to ask your burning customer experience questions. If you’ve ever wondered, What would they do when it comes to your email marketing, your selling strategies, you’re burning headaches and obstacles that keep coming up and keep occupying your headspace.

Then this is the podcast for you. If you track down the link in the show notes, you can submit your question. For it to be answered and featured in an upcoming episode. And if you are game enough to include your name and business, I will even link back to your website and give you a little shout out because let’s spread the love.

So who am I? To talk to you about all things customer experience, what makes me qualified to build this platform and create this stage. So I am a, an audience driven copywriter turned customer experience strategist. I’m also an audience research fanatic. So I  also come from a corporate background.

So let me tell you a little bit about my complicated journey into customer experience. So as we all do straight out of college. I embarked into the corporate world and over the past 20 odd years worked. Pretty much across every stage of the customer journey. I worked in after sales support. So I’m really dealing with those big hairy problems when things go wrong for a shirt maker in London, fancy brand.

So the customers really were expecting next level support. I also worked for a global car brand in corporate communications and. PR. So that meant really pitching ideas, finding unique angles, refining messaging to get us into national and international press. And I also worked in corporate sales for one of Australia’s largest retailers.

So that. Involve dealing with suppliers and selling them into a particular tech tool that we were offering, but also working on the retention strategies. So getting them to re sign up once their 12 month subscription was up. And what I worked out along the way is that you can’t really isolate one step of the customer journey.

If you’re awesome at attracting new customers, but then neglect them as soon as they’ve signed up. Your business is not going to work long term same thing for visibility. If you manage to get people onto your email list and then you take up space in the inbox, but you don’t know how to sell to them in a way that feels good.

They’re not going to buy again, not sustainable for your business. So ultimately long story short, I was made. Dundon from one of my jobs on while on mat leave. And that sent me on a soul searching journey. I knew I wanted to tap into my marketing skills, my corporate com skills, my sales skills somehow, and have a bigger impact in the world rather than being a number in the corporate system.

So I ultimately landed on content marketing to begin with as a way to really nurture connections, create conversations and warm people to purchase.  And that involved starting a side hustle while working a corporate gig and being pregnant with number three. So I quickly realized that content marketing was great, but my passion really was in copywriting.

So those audience driven strategies that sell, that connect, that encourage repeat sales. So what quickly happened is that I got too busy in my freelance business and quit my corporate job and worked full time. In my business and ultimately supporting clients, online business owners, course creators, membership site owners, service providers globally with the audience research to really get the juicy messaging and the juicy insights to educate.

The copy that would underpin their marketing approach, but along the way, my customers really helped me work out my strength. My strength is copywriting. I’m bloody good at it, but the little side effect that went with working with me one on one is really what quickly became my passion, which is customer experience and customer delight.

So my one on one clients. Repeatedly and consistently told me that the copy they walked away with was amazing. They loved it. It was selling for them, but the little seemingly small touches and inverted commas that I set them up with along the way in our strategy calls and, in follow up calls was really what they loved about working with me, really going above and beyond when it comes to the copy, how does the copy connect with.

What comes before it with what comes next and those out of the box ideas quickly became yeah, a little added bonus that I threw in for my copy clients. And over the past two odd years, I’ve really fallen in love with that strategic approach. I still love writing the copy for my clients. I still do.

But I’m really leaning into audience research as a way to make that copy go further. So as part of my intensive, which is my signature offer,  I start with the audience research process. So really strategic audience surveys that help us work out what customers need to hear before the purchase, what they need during the purchase, and also what they need to help them get the most.

Out of their purchase and buy again. So it’s a 360 degree approach that has not only transformed the way I run my online business, but also how my clients run their businesses and approach the way they market to their customers. And this podcast is designed to give you access to some of those strategies that I recommend to my customers all designed to be doable on a small business budget.

And. Most of the time with tech tools, you likely already have in your business, whether that’s email marketing platforms, CRM systems it’s all about making them talk to each other and having a complete picture of your customers, your audience, your subscribers their behavior and how you can leverage that to really create bespoke experiences that go above and beyond. 

The problem I often uncovered with my one on one clients Pretty much consistently through my eight plus years in business. Often when they come to me and complete my intake survey for our project, they list amazing customer service as a competitive advantage, as a unique selling point. People come to them and choose them because of their customer service.

And I quickly have to tell them that customer service, unfortunately, nowadays, especially, is not. A unique selling proposition anymore. It’s something your audience expects because they’re spoiled for choice, right? There are so many people doing very similar things to you selling very similar offers. So delivering on a promise is not going to get you that sale and make you logical choice.

And often that There’s a misconception around customer service, customer experience. What’s the difference? It’s really hard to understand because there is that mystery around customer experience. It sounds too fancy. It sounds like something that’s reserved for the corporates, the big end of town, people with Big money to spend on complex tech tools.

The difference between customer service and customer experience is pretty simple when you break it down.  Customer service delivers on a promise, right? People purchase your offer and you deliver it. Whereas customer experience is being one step ahead at all times. Customer experience really is about anticipating your audience’s next move, their next purchase, their next question or objection.

And Really being one step ahead is going to get you to stand out. It’s going to create brand loyalty, and it’s going to have your audience pay attention to everything you have to say. If you wanted to sum it up, you can look at it this way. So customer experience solves. Now let’s take a closer look at some of those aspects that I would consider critical for a standout customer experience, beginning with personalization and if I know here, you say, yes, I include the first name in my emails.

I address my subscribers by first name. That’s not what I’m talking about. Personalization for me refers to stepping away from cookie cutter marketing strategies that blast your entire audience and list with the same message. You really need to shift. Your approach to behavior driven email marketing, where you let your subscribers behavior and the signals they’re sending you decide the next email they’ll receive.

You can also really lean into segmentation so people receive the right content at the right time. In the right format and knowing your subscriber preferences based on their behavior means you can deliver a video. If they prefer video content, you can deliver a podcast. If they prefer tuning into a podcast, it really is being strategic about.

The signals your audience is sending you and paying close attention to how you can use it to your advantage.  Next up, definitely ease and simplicity. We are impatient by nature, right? We want things at the click of a button. So it’s all about reducing friction. On every step of your customer journey. And that can include, crystal clear messaging and a crystal clear offer promise.

So people don’t have to second guess what’s included in their purchase. It’s also about optimizing the checkout process. So really having a great checkout tool. Being crystal clear about what’s on the other side of that buy now button. It’s about anticipating the objections in the, lead up to that purchase decision.

So you can put them to bed before they become an issue. You don’t want to start addressing them on the sales page and bring them up for the first time when people need to make that decision. You can also look at flexible payment plans. So we all know at the moment, budgets are tight, times are tough. So making it easier for people to invest in you and take that next logical step with you can be the difference between a purchase or not converting that customer.

You can also have chatbots on your sales page. So if they get stuck, for example, there is an immediate. Way to get support  and as a service provider here, make it super easy to book a discovery call with you. You don’t want them to jump through a million hoops to actually jump on a call with you.

Obviously that’s scratching the surface, but just raising some ideas and some concepts with you and opportunities to infuse ease and simplicity into your. Purchase decisions. Next up, delight. I’m a huge customer delight fan. If you have been in my universe for a while, if you’re on my email list, you would know that I pop up in your inbox with certain surprises when you least expect it.

And it all comes back to tapping into that. In our childhood, kinder surprise eggs, we don’t buy kinder surprises for the chocolate, right? The chocolate’s okay, but it’s all about what’s inside. Inside that egg. The surprise and delight factor that gets us to spend a small fortune on this little chocolate egg and a remarkable customer experience really is all about showing up with specific relevant content.

When your audience least expects it, it’s that element of surprise and delight and feeling like someone genuinely cares. About you as a subscriber, about you as a customer, about you as a person, right? So really be creative, have fun in your brand and tap into that inner child and have a look at how you can surprise and delight your subscribers, your customers, when they least expect it, it’s going to get you so far because.

People really feel appreciated and appreciated on a deeper level. And if you’re going, I have no idea what that can look like. It can be as easy as a personal video message before jumping on a discovery call so people can put a face to the name. It can be a postcard that you send via snail mail to people who sign up to your membership, or it can even be a.

Sneaky discount code you send by email based on behavior. Your super fans are showing you in your email platform. And again, tapping into that data, into segmentation and knowing their behavior. The sky is really the limit here. And it’s one of my favorite aspects of the customer experience. And last but not least, it’s all about.

Trust and transparency. So you can surprise and delight as much as you want. If people don’t trust your brand, they’re not going to invest in you and take that next logical step with you. So  unfortunately, as much as it should be a given, a remarkable customer experience really comes down to setting clear expectations.

And delivering on your promise. And thankfully, I really have to say small businesses and online businesses, like you have an unfair advantage when it comes to customer experience. Corporates might have fancy data warehouses, lavish budgets, and any tech tool imaginable, but it’s really much harder to infuse personal touches, create a thriving, engaged community and lead with.

Authenticity again, buzzword here, but really let your brand value shine through in your customer experience. What you can expect from this  podcast is actionable, bite sized strategies to help you do just that. It’s designed to help you stand out for the right reasons. It’s designed to help you build a thriving online community who love your brand.

And it’s designed to help you generate repeat sales that feel good and don’t involve sleazy, pushy. Selling techniques, every strategy we’re going to explore represents one piece of your customer experience puzzle. And we’re going to work progressively on this puzzle as part of this podcast journey. Each strategy we’re going to explore can help you boost your customer experience individually, but the strategies work even harder for you.

If you keep chipping away at them, improving, tweaking, and listening to your customers as you go along.  So before I leave you today I have some action steps for you because what’s the point of listening if you don’t take action? So I would love you to identify one small tweak that you can make. To your customer onboarding experience.

How can you make it smoother? What’s one little tweak that can help  explore and address the next step, the next question, the next obstacle your customer might come across.  I also would love you to find one way to personalize a customer interaction this week. So how can you infuse. Personalization into one email, into one strategy, into one touch point.

And I would love you to think of one simple way to delight your audience. Whether that’s one customer or a bunch of them, have a look at how you can surprise and delight and show up unexpectedly. So in episode two. I’m going to answer the first listener question with one strategic tip to help you make a remarkable customer experience your unfair advantage, and remember to submit your burning customer experience question via the link in the show notes. 

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, subscribe, leave a review and share the episode. So even more small savvy business owners like you can catch up onto this brand new interactive. Podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in and see you next time.