Customer service works to make it easy for customers to resolve specific issues. The challenge of customer experience is to inject that same ease across all the cumulative interactions the customer has with the organization over time. In order to deliver ‘low effort’ customer experience, it’s important to look beyond isolated issues, and remove friction, such as lack of data or the need to repeat information, that causes frustration in the customer’s experience over the lifetime of the relationship.
As more organizations count on superior customer experience to drive growth and market share, all functions — from IT to customer service — have to contribute to that experience.

“ Bad service interaction is only outweighed by price 30% of the time”
Leaders across functions should drive and reinforce a customer-first culture in which employees are empathetic when issues arise, quick to get to the the root cause of customer problems, and empowered to use their judgement to deliver the best solutions. In this way, customer-centricity can be a powerful way for organizations to differentiate themselves from competitors.

A shared outcome
Gartner found that service experience plays a role in approximately one quarter of all customer attrition. Furthermore, bad service interaction is only outweighed by price 30% of the time, and changing customer needs, 28% of the time. Customer service can significantly impact the customer’s perspective of overall experience. Reducing the level of effort required by the customer can increase the chances that a customer will be loyal — and failing to provide a low effort experience can just as easily fuel disloyalty.