Customer Success vs. Customer Support: What’s the Difference?

In recent years, executives have thrown the term “customer success” around like a linguistic football. Like many other buzzwords, extensive use has obscured its meaning. Due to the recency of the term’s evolution and a lack of clear distinction between customer success and customer support or service, it can be a confusing phrase. Despite this, customer success has the potential to be so much more than a buzzword. Understanding the difference between the two terms can help your team and your customers better understand the distinction and avoid confusion. Below, we explore the contrasts.

1. Proactive vs. reactive

Perhaps the most well-known difference is that customer success is proactive. It is designed to help identify customer goals and fulfill them. The company, rather than the client, initiates customer success activities. These activities can range from helping your customer reach their own clients with your tools to making sure they can successfully access all aspects of your service. Ideally, you want to provide additional value to your customer and make sure they get the most out of your service. Check here for more details on how you can maximize customer success for diverse clients with an accessible website. Conversely, customers initiate customer support interactions when they have a problem or question.

2. Full lifecycle vs. transactional

Because of the proactivity detailed above, customer success operations are continuous. They span the customer’s full lifecycle with the company or product. A customer success agent should always be looking for ways to improve the customer experience. On the other hand, customer support usually occurs in short, transactional bursts brought on by a support ticket or email.

3. Revenue generation vs. investment

Customer success aims to build a long-term relationship with the customer that maintains or increases the revenue you gain from that client. By improving your relationship with that customer and showing them all the value you have to offer, you increase revenue generation. Customer support, conversely, is devoted to solving customer problems and is usually counted as a cost for the company. Satisfactory customer support interactions can certainly help you retain customers. However, most companies do not view this as a function that directly generates profit.

In short, both of these phrases are essential functions for modern businesses. By maximizing your efforts in these areas, you can build long-term relationships with your customers and ensure they keep investing in you. Focus on clearly defining these terms and the roles associated with them for your team members and customers.