Customer Service vs. Client Experience: What’s the Difference?!

The business landscape and how companies interact with their clients is in a constant state of change. Over the last two decades, changes in technology have allowed companies across all industries to become more efficient and effective in how they interact with their clients — the banking industry is no different. Smartphones and other mobile technology have helped lenders become more connected than ever with their customers.

As this shift has happened, how lending institutions think about their customer relationships has, should, and will continue to evolve as well. The days of relying solely on customer service are behind us, and the era of focusing and investing on the client experience is here. But what’s the difference?

Customer Service: Reactive

Customer service is the e-mail, phone call, or individual touch-points that an employee is providing to a customer. By nature, most of these interactions are reactionary. For example, when a builder wants to find out how much they have available to draw on their property, a quick response letting them know of funds availability can be considered great customer service. 

Client Experience: Proactive

Client experience takes customer service and elevates it to the next level; it includes the tools that a client uses before, during, and after that interaction.  Client experience is giving the customer a tool that provides them transparency to see what they have available at all times without having to email or call (think online banking). Client experience is being able to use the information at their fingertips to request draws, inspections, or any other action on their property. Though customer service plays a part in it, a great client experience is what sets banks and companies apart from their competitors. Instead of spending valuable resources adding more people to provide customer service, financial institutions should be investing more resources in the tools and technology that will impact the client experience and turn their client base into raving fans.

At Built, we are in the business of empowering lenders with technology to provide a great client experience to their customers throughout the construction lending process. If you would like to learn more about how our software can make raving fans out of your clients, we should talk.

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