Customer Service vs. Customer Support: Explained
Understanding the difference between customer service and customer support can be a challenge.
At first glance, customer service and customer support seem similar:
Both fields involve helping customers.
They use similar tools like email, chat, and phone to communicate.
They employ similar skills to increase customer satisfaction.
Both are critical to the customer experience delivered by businesses.
While both focus on helping customers, customer support is a specific type of customer service that involves documentation, product feedback, and technical problem solving.
The terms customer service and customer support aren't interchangeable. Customer service is an umbrella term; customer support is a specific type of customer service.
Customer service vs. customer support
The difference between customer service and customer support is that customer support teams support a product, while customer service teams provide service to a customer.
What does that look like in practice?
Consider a customer who walks into a retail store looking for a size medium blue T-shirt. A customer service rep could help locate the T-shirt, ring the customer up, and pack up the shirt for them. They might try to upsell by suggesting a sweater that looks nice with the shirt.
The customer has everything they want, but there’s no other feedback or information that goes into the experience. It’s transactional.
By comparison, consider a customer who emails Dropbox about an issue they have sharing a file with colleagues. The customer support agent:
immediately links the customer to documentation they wrote and walks them through the appropriate steps
categorizes the conversation to help give feedback to the product team about the share function
starts a conversation about improving sharing
follows up with the customer about their experience.
A customer support agent's role is more about improving the customer experience than interacting transactionally with the customer.
Customer support professionals use customer service skills, but that’s only one part of their job. Customer support also includes writing knowledge base documentation, providing product feedback, and conducting usability studies.
Customer support teams are often closely integrated with product teams. They have a seat at the table where decisions involving the product are made.
Compared to customer service teams, support teams are generally more involved with the end-to-end customer experience.
Learn what modern customer support is and discover 8 essential tips for delivering great support.
A detailed breakdown of customer service vs. customer support
Both customer service and customer support are focused on the customer, but they approach providing help from different perspectives.
| Customer Service | Customer Support |
|---|---|
Generally an entry-level job, with little career growth available except in management positions | Many different growth opportunities in addition to management. |
Focuses on efficient, helpful customer transactions | Focuses on improving the intersection between customer experience and the product |
Tends to measure transactional metrics like CSAT, average handle time, and first contact resolution | In addition to transactional metrics, also looks at business-related metrics like net promoter score, customer effort score, and churn |
Positions are available in every industry that serves customers — e.g., retail, fast food, banking, hospitality, etc. | Positions are most often available in SaaS and ecommerce companies |
Connects customers to existing answers and solutions | Involves technical problem solving, troubleshooting, and finding new solutions and answers |
Not every team defines customer support and customer service the same way. If you don’t recognize your job description in this post, don’t worry! At the end of the day, it’s all about providing the best possible experience to your customers and understanding how your role helps your company meet that goal.
Sarah Chambers
Sarah is a customer service consultant and the founder of Supported Content. When she’s not arguing about customer service, she’s usually outdoors rock climbing or snowboarding. Follow her on Twitter to keep up with her adventures.
