When it comes to launching or enhancing a direct-to-consumer (DTC) business, there are many opportunities for the front line that engages directly with your customers. DTC companies aim to take care of their customers in a variety of methods, but at the end of the day, a customer’s relationship with a company hinges on a series of smaller interactions. So, it’s important to spend time getting those details right, whether that is training for your team or creating effective feedback loops.

Watch the Customer Care Experience Episode of DTC Discussions Here

Let’s review a couple important concepts within a customer experience strategy. Customer service and customer care are both needed to create your overall customer experience, and they work together in different, complimentary ways to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. Though they sound very similar, they are quite separate concepts. Here’s the difference:

• Customer Service: The advice or assistance a company gives its customers, by providing support and answering questions to meet simple needs quickly and effectively.
• Customer Care: The personal and emotional connection a company gives its customers, by actively listening to their problems and concerns to empathetically meet a deeper need.

Customer care is a step past customer service’ via a deeper, more empathetic connection, and it isn’t as easy to quantify. It’s the longer-term approach to taking care of a customer. Focussing on customer care efforts helps companies build a mutually beneficial relationship with their customers to become a trusted authority.

Part 7 of DTC Discussions is Focused on the Customer Care Experience

In this episode of DTC Discussions, I’m joined by Shatakshi Shekhar, a Senior Consultant and consumer care expert to discuss how to create a consistent customer care experience and the key capabilities that care teams have. DTC opens up different types of interactions, such as order management, payment management, site account, promotion, product, reviews, and more. One of the most important steps in creating a consistent consumer experience is to pour into your consumer care team with training, tools, and templates. Secondly, consumer allowances are a large factor for your company to consider in your overall consumer care strategy. Lastly, working to improve your insights and reporting methods is a great way to better understand consumer engagements.

Watch the Customer Care Experience Episode of DTC Discussions Here

Clarkston’s DTC Discussions Webinar Series

If you haven’t already, be sure to watch the rest of Clarkston’s DTC Webinar Series, a collection of videos designed to help consumer products and retail companies launch, grow, and optimize direct to consumer businesses, or learn more about Clarkston’s direct-to-consumer consulting services here.

• Part One: Introduction to DTC
• Part Two: Direct to Consumer Project Management
• Part Three: Digital Pathway and DTC Storefront
• Part Four: Payment, Tax, and Accounting in DTC
• Part Five: DTC Logistics and Supply Chain Operations
• Part Six: DTC Marketing and Analytics