Understanding the difference between customer service (CS) and customer experience (CX) has never been more crucial, especially considering that bad CX could cost companies $3.8 trillion in 2025.
Despite being closely linked, customer service and CX should not be interchanged. Misunderstanding their differences will result in missed opportunities, misallocated budgets and siloed teams working at cross-purposes.
How to define the two functions
CX is defined as the holistic sum of customer perceptions across every touchpoint. The importance of getting your CX strategy right is paramount for organizational success. According to research by CX Network, a staggering 56 percent of customers are more likely to switch brands if they have a poor experience. Similarly, PwC also found that 32 percent would abandon a brand they’ve been loyal to for years if they become dissatisfied just once.
CS, on the other hand, is defined as a reactive assistance aimed at resolving specific issues. Customer support comes in many forms, such as helpdesks and chatbots, to name just a few.
CX Network identified 10 key customer service skills needed to succeed in any industry. These include:
- Effective communication
- Emotional intelligence
- Attentiveness
- Patience and resilience
- Problem-solving skills
- Time management
- Flexibility
- Collaborative working
- Continuous improvement
- Multitasking
Why the terms get confused
To understand why the two terms get confused, we must take a look at how they have developed over the years. Customer support was the first formalized customer-facing function. Support teams were the ones responsible for handling customer pain points long before CX became a boardroom priority. These teams were seen as the original “Voice of the Customer (VoC).” This legacy role still features in outdated organizational models.
In contrast, CX is cross-functional. However, many organizations still treat it as a function siloed within marketing or support. As a result, support teams may be the only ones talking directly to customers and marketing may measure brand sentiment but not service outcomes. What usually happens is the difference between reactive support and proactive CX design gets muddled by this fragmented design.
The confusion also isn’t helped by the fact that tools like CSAT (customer satisfaction) and NPS (Net Promoter Score) are often used by both CX and CS teams. The overlap in these tools can cause misinterpretation. For example, a high CSAT from a support ticket may be seen as “good CX,” ignoring broader journey friction. In contrast, a poor NPS may be blamed on support without understanding larger journey breakdowns.
The interdependence between customer service and customer experience
While they serve different functions, CS and CX are deeply interconnected and a mature CX strategy recognizes this. For example CS is one of the few person-to-person interactions customers have wth a brand. A successful support conversation can redeem a poor experience elsewhere in the customer journey. That being said, a bad support experience can worsen the frustration and even damage customer loyalty. CS is therefore a critical touchpoint in the CX journey.
CS can also provide feedback which can be used to aid the company’s overall CX strategy. Support teams are often on the frontlines and hear what customers are most unhappy about in real time. This feedback is invaluable. Unfortunately, this golden information stays trapped in ticketing systems that never get put to proper use.
Instead, a mature CX organization uses support insights to identify journey pain points and feed common complaints into product, UX and marketing teams.
CS and CX are constantly evolving
The type of support customers are expecting is changing with the increasing capabilities of customer support tools. With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), customer support chatbots are developing into agentic support systems. For example, Qualtrics earlier this year released their Experience Agents, which are highly specialized AI agents designed to autonomously deliver exceptional and personalized customer support at scale across every channel.
Salesforce also unveiled their Agentforce this year, a complete enterprise agentic platform letting organizations build and deploy digital labor for customers and employees with existing workflows. The AI can proactively detect issues and offer resolution steps. AI-generated complaint responses can provide solutions while adhering to policies (for example, creating service review tickets for out-of-warranty products).
"Agentforce can understand, reason and take action on customer queries - whether solving an issue directly or escalating it. AI agents can communicate across all channels, leading to an 80 percent increase in query resolution,” said Roddy Alexander, enterprise account executive at Salesforce at their Agentforce Summit earlier this year.
CX Network’s 2025 Global State of CX report reflects the speed at which these agents are being developed. Generative AI chatbots and virtual assistants received 25 percent of the vote on the top trends influencing the role of the practitioner this year. This was up four positions from sixth place in 2024. They’re no longer “nice-to-haves.” They are essential for providing 24/7 support cost-effectively.
The future of CX
So how should modern brands evolve to reflect this understanding of the two functions? Organizations often mistakenly allocate the bulk of "CX" budgets to support operations by hiring more agents or purchasing a new CRM tool, for example. Instead, companies should fund cross-functional CX teams, including product, operations, marketing and support.
Applying predictive analytics and AI to identify friction before it causes harm is also important. CX and support should not compete for ownership. Instead, they should collaborate! Support is a direct reflection of how well your CX is working. By aligning the two, brands can transform pain points into moments of loyalty.