Top 13 Customer Service Types: Upsides and Downsides

Aldous Huxley once mused “There are things known and there are things unknown — and in between are the doors of perception.”

In the world of business, think of types of customer service as these intricate, varied “doors”.

Each door isn't just a barrier or entry point, but a testament to a unique story, a distinct need, a particular interaction.

In Huxley’s perception, not all doors open the same way, nor do they reveal identical vistas.

Similarly, no two customer service experiences can be precisely replicated. Each type, each variant, offers a unique lens, a different approach to the vast world of customer understanding.

Yet, here’s the conundrum: Which door to knock on? How do you pick the right entry for your narrative? Which path will reveal your customers’ truest sentiments?

Let’s journey together as we explore different customer service types and how to choose the right one that fits to tell your tale the best.

What is customer service, really?

Customer service is the set of actions a business takes to support customers before, during and after buying or using a product or service. It involves various communication methods to assist customers, answer questions, resolve issues and guide them in using the product.

At its core, it's a symbiotic exchange of value: companies decode user behavior while customers extract product utility.

And if you peel back the layers, you’ll see that it, in fact, stands as a reflection of your brand’s ideology. Every interaction, response and resolution becomes a mirror — showcasing how much you value your users, listen to their feedback and commit to their satisfaction.

Why is customer service important?

Customer service isn't just a company's "helpdesk." It's a brand's heartbeat, capturing the essence of its values. Each interaction moulds perceptions, with ripple effects beyond a single transaction. Remember, meaningful, authentic customer service improves customer satisfaction as great service anchors users for the long haul and turns them into brand advocates. Consistent, personalized omnichannel customer service makes customers feel valued — two-thirds even expect this from you. Exceptional service is frugality in action — long-term savings outweigh service overheads. Business growth is tethered to good service. In fact, American brands that lead with their service experiences also generate 2X the revenue. 

Customer service is an investment with dividends in loyalty, word-of-mouth and competitive advantage. With an effective customer service strategy, you can stay in your customers’ good books and strides ahead of your competitors. 

13 popular customer service types

An e-commerce store might rely more on social, whereas an ed-tech company might benefit more from live chat. What types of customer service are right for your business? Here are 13 of them for you to check out.

Traditional support

Traditional support allows customers to walk into offline stores or service centers to get direct help. While the digital world dominates today, there's still merit in this classic approach.

Physical touchpoints aren't obsolete. Especially for tactile goods. Imagine a customer strolls in keen on buying a camera. Not only can they gauge its weight, but they also click, adjust settings and witness its features firsthand.

Doubts? A knowledgeable staffer is right there, translating tech jargon into simple information.

However, businesses offering brick-and-mortar support are now rare. If your product isn’t bound by a four-walled space, you can simply set up a cloud contact center to serve customers virtually.

Read more about the benefits of cloud contact centers for brands. 

• Pros: Personalized touch, instant feedback, clear communication
• Cons: Limited hours, high costs, long waits, tough to scale, variable service quality

Phone support

Even today, phone support remains an enduring classic. The personal touch in a voice conversation cannot be understated. It's the warm, welcoming voice of a human agent at the other end solving customer’s WiFi troubles or upgrading their airline seat.

Immediate and personal, but sometimes, customers might find themselves lost in a loop of jazzy hold music. However, call center automation levels up phone support with conversational IVR that can gather caller information, detect sentiment and route callers to subject-matter experts.

• Pros: Direct communication, fosters trust, allows for in-depth troubleshooting
• Cons: Prolonged wait times, potential for miscommunication, can be resource intensive

Know More: Call Center Technologies That Have Reshaped Phone Support

Email support

As businesses move online, they're seeing the real value of email. It's not just a side tool anymore.

Emails give a clear record of chats, making everything open and honest. They're great for complex issues that need lots of back-and-forths, including attachments or links.

A few technologies that make email a lucrative customer service type:

• Automated ticketing: When a customer emails about, say, a failed payment, this system automatically logs it, ensuring that it doesn’t get lost in the influx of daily emails.
• Canned responses: Think of frequently asked questions like "How do I reset my password?" — a pre-drafted, yet personalized, response speeds up the resolution.
• Prioritization algorithms: Pinpointing urgent queries from regular ones, ensuring timely interventions.

Plus, with email, you can chat with customers across time-zones without needing an immediate reply. But here's a tip: don't make them wait over a day for an answer; it could negatively impact customer satisfaction.

• Pros: Establishes traceable record, simplifies sharing, versatile with automation
• Cons: Can lead to prolonged exchanges, lacks personal touch, absence of emotive cues

Live chat support

A swift aide in the world of digital immediacy, live chats pop up just when users need them the most. Think of it as the digital equivalent of a store assistant. Live chats provide real-time, on-the-spot human guidance.

Say a user hesitates while purchasing a pricey gadget.

The system senses indecision, immediately launching a live chat with a human agent. They can then offer insights, perhaps, into the product’s warranty or a limited-time discount to ensure the conversion doesn’t slip.

• Pros: Instant query resolution, better engagement, seamless visual support, real-time feedback
• Cons: Network-dependent, peak-hour agent scarcity, potential technical barriers

Check out this video to know when to use live chat as a customer service type.

Social media support

Essentially, social media customer service is knowing when to listen, when to step in and when to pave the way forward. Today's customers vocalize online. And you can’t just afford to be responsive. You need to stay perpetually switched on, translating insights into swift actions and having the savvy to see what’s around the digital bend. 

• Real-time engagement: A complaint, a shoutout or even a random tag on Twitter can be instantaneously addressed and can shift perceptions from indifferent to loyal.
• Crisis management: One misstep or delayed response can go viral, turning into a PR nightmare but, with effective social media crisis strategies, businesses can address all these issues efficiently. 
• Community building: Beyond troubleshooting, social platforms provide a canvas to engage in lighter moments, celebrate customer stories and build an engaging community.  
• Mentions monitoring: Social media monitoring helps you continuously scour platforms to catch any brand mention - direct or subtle.  

• Pros: Active customer reach, brand transparency, younger demographic engagement
• Cons: Public criticism, constant monitoring, overwhelming request volume

💡 Sprinklr tip: Worried about managing too many social channels? Simplify! Use a social care solution that zeroes in on your customers' favorite channels and use the intel for smarter agent assignments. Plus, with smooth channel switches, you won't drop the ball. Prioritize and deflect – and keep the conversations flowing without missing a beat.

FAQ pages

Starting as a go-to corner on websites, FAQ pages and self-service portals have evolved into a digital repository of information.

They're not just about "Why isn't my password working?" anymore. Imagine a user struggling to integrate an API; they can hop onto the portal, sift through knowledge base guides, watch a quick demo or even engage with an interactive flow chart.

And while FAQs preemptively tackle common roadblocks with concise answers, customer self-service might house in-depth guidebooks or nifty infographics. Together, they're your 24/7 customer service powerhouse, without the on-call staff.

• Pros: Self-help, 24/7 availability, consistent info
• Cons: Limited issue coverage, impersonal, navigation complexity

Chatbot support

When your customer is burning the midnight oil and needs answers, customer service chatbots step in. These tireless, AI-powered teammates work around the clock, ensuring no question goes unanswered, no matter the hour.  

• Natural Language Processing: Besides the rule-based ones that follow a script, there are conversational text and voice bots that can seamlessly translate "I'm stuck with this feature" into actionable solutions, bridging language and phrasing gaps. 
• Conversational analytics: Conversational analytics sifts through chat threads, surfacing emergent themes — app hitches, UI confusions, login hiccups or payment concerns. You can use this intel to tweak and refine your strategy and systems. 
• Integrations: With integrated data, chatbots can cater suggestions based on past user behavior.  

Want to know how to use them to power up your customer service? Check this video out. 

• Pros: 24/7 availability, rapid responses, consistency in information 
• Cons: Lack of absolute empathy, potential for misinterpretation 

Video support

Video support utilizes real-time visual communication, enabling a seamless, immersive customer experience. It brings the human touch to digital interactions, incorporating facial expressions and body language, which text or voice can't capture. 

• Pros: Personal touch, visual demo, geography transcendence 
• Cons: Good internet need, user anonymity loss, tech barriers 

A few use cases where video shines as a type of customer service: 

• Complex setups: Real-time visual aid trumps written or audio instructions for setting up intricate equipment 
• Product demos: For high-tech gadgets with nuanced features, a live demo goes beyond a manual's scope 
• Consultative selling: Personalized product suggestions based on visual evaluation, like suggesting a skincare product after analyzing skin concerns 
• Specialized training: For products that come with a steep learning curve, step-by-step video training helps users master products 

Community forums

Customer communities are where users discuss, share solutions or raise product-related topics. Honestly, it’s collective wisdom at its best. These platforms act as a brand's mini-Reddit. 

For example, within niche tech communities, sharing unique hacks or findings builds a sense of unity and product allegiance. Say a user finds a unique workaround to a software bug. Sharing it on forums ensures the whole community benefits, reducing similar future tickets. 

• Pros: Peer-to-peer solutions, community-building, cost-effective 
• Cons: Unverified info, potential misinformation, demands moderation 

Read More: How Community Moderators & Customer Service Work Together to Elevate Customer Experience 

Gamification: Energize your customer community & boost engagement 

A dull community is a dead community. 

Inject verve and vibe in your community with gamification. Use an AI-powered customer community forum tool like Sprinklr’s community forum software that encourages community members to participate more actively and keep the community alive and kicking, by offering: 

📊Leaderboards 

💠Coveted badges 

💳Loyalty points  

Keep members engaged and boost your brand loyalty with peer-to-peer assistance.   

Want to give it a try? Hit the button below to activate your 30-day free trial of the Sprinklr community forum solution. 

TRY COMMUNITY GAMIFICATION FOR FREE

In-app support

This customer service type delivers immediate user assistance within the application’s ecosystem. Instead of hunting for solutions externally, users access the embedded support tool — often a chat bubble or support link to fetch answers. That’s how in-app support minimizes disruptions and renders seamless customer engagement. 

• Pros: Contextual assistance, user engagement, app retention 
• Cons: Potential UX disruption, update needs, app-user limitation 

Let's consider a telemedicine platform, "HealthConnect". 

When patients schedule virtual consultations, ensuring a glitch-free experience is important.  

If a user struggles with secure document uploads, HealthConnect’s in-app support guides them. Rather than risking missed appointments or breaching data confidentiality on third-party platforms, users get quick, secure in-app solutions — which is absolute in healthcare. 

On-site support

While digital assistance is great, there's something reassuring about having an expert on your doorstep, with tools and expertise, ready to fix complex challenges in real time. It's direct, it's efficient and it's tailored to the task at hand. 

• Pros: Personalized, complex issue handling, trust-building 
• Cons: Expensive, logistic challenges, geographical limits 

What can you do when your customer hits a roadblock that just can't be sorted remotely? That's where on-site support shines.  

Imagine a state-of-the-art home theater system acting up.  

Sometimes, customers need a pro's hands and eyes right there. The experts can dissect the problem, tweak the settings or maybe reconfigure the setup. 

Augmented & virtual reality

In types of customer care, AR and VR take immersive guidance to an incredible level. Customers no longer just hear or read solutions, they live them. AR and VR add an empirical dimension to support — turning passive interactions into dynamic experiences.  

• Guide users in setting up complex machinery with AR visuals overlaying each step 
• Conduct interactive AR workshops, where real-time annotations enhance hands-on learning 
• Simulate real-life test scenarios, let them use a product in a virtual space, to grasp its full scope 

Not all businesses need to implement this type of customer service as AR/VR works best for fine-grained use cases — like the ones I gave above. 

• Pros: Immersive, detailed walkthroughs, innovation 
• Cons: Device needs, learning curve, integration costs 

How 4 Leading Brands Are Using AR and VR for Memorable Customer Experiences

Read the full blog here

Feedback and review

You need to monitor, listen and take action on your feedback and reviews in time.  

When customers rave about a new feature, it's a cue to amplify it. A slew of criticisms? It signals an opportunity to fix or upgrade something. 

For example, before their strategic shift, Heartland Dental waded through a sea of online comments the old-fashioned way. They chose to unify their conversations, they could now smoothly track feedback across multiple platforms and intervene in time.  

This efficient oversight allowed them to spot and swiftly tackle negative reviews.  

The result? Rescued relationships with 1,400 patients annually and a whopping $700,000 saved. 

Read more about their incredible feat here. 

• Pros: User insights, data-driven decisions, continuous improvement 
• Cons: Survey fatigue, biased feedback 

How to choose the right customer service type for your business

The name, the game, and the fame of this iconic fashion brand echo in every Hollywood event. Prada is known to never compromise on the quality of anything that bears its name. 

Its customer service is no exception.  

Prada’s top priority is to build a service engine that captivates customers across every touchpoint. Anchored in three strategic anchors, its approach to customer service is worth telling. 

Solution 1: Digital-first support 

When the world pivoted digital, Prada seized the day. It brought its focus on extracting tide-changing insights from a solid AI-led analytics and reporting tool. Fashion Week murmurs, market trends — these insights steered real-time strategies, connecting and applying past learnings to today. 

Solution 2: Social customer service 

Prada realized that the best way to serve and rope in customers with stellar service is through social commerce. Prada's agents waltzed across platforms — Facebook, Instagram, live chat — responding to social chatter with personalization. Conversational commerce helped Prada turn chats into conversions on the same channels. 

Solution 3: A truly unified approach to customer support 

Prada realized it had to eliminate silos from its stunning portfolio of luxury brands. It opted for a customer service software that unified each bit of information on customers in a central hub — where campaigns, insights and care came together. Prada's identity resonated consistently with a cohesive brand voice across channels and no more fragmented efforts. 

Prada went beyond serving; they crafted experiences. Their old, unchanging ways turned into lively pictures that charmed millennials and Gen Z. Luxury's talk shifted, going from clothes to weaving exciting stories of connection, care and shopping. 

Read the complete story here. 

Implementation of different types of customer service – 9 steps 

Just like Prada chose the right customer service types to serve their customers, you can do too. No matter what categories of customer service you choose to go ahead with, careful solution implementation will hold the key to the long-term success of your customer service.  

We have weaved a step-by-step guide to help you with implementation. Here you go:  

🔍Understand your audience 

Identify your target audience and their preferred communication channels by conducting customer surveys, analyzing customer data and monitoring social media interactions. You can also use social listening tools to identify your audience’s key concerns and preferred channels for brand communications. 

🎯Define your goals 

Clearly define your customer service goals and map each goal to measurable KPIs and metrics, enabling performance and progress tracking of your customer service function and teams. 

Learn More: What Are the Key Customer Service Metrics to Monitor in 2024? 

📲 Choose communication channels 

Select the appropriate customer service channel such as social media, email or live chat. If your customers are active on social media, choose them to serve on platforms like Facebook or Twitter. If they prefer more direct communication, prioritize email or live chat support. 

📊 Implement AI-powered analytics 

Use AI to extract customer service analytics from interactions, helping to tailor your service strategy. Analyze customer feedback, sentiment and behavior to identify trends and patterns.  

👥 Personalize customer interactions 

Respond to customer queries and feedback with personalized messages across various platforms leveraging customer data to address them by name and reference specific details about their inquiry or feedback. 

➕ Unify customer information 

Integrate customer data into a central hub for a holistic view of customer interactions and preferences. 

📢 Maintain consistent brand voice 

Ensure a consistent brand voice and messaging across all customer touchpoints creating brand guidelines to define your brand's tone, style and key messaging points. Train your customer service team to adhere to these guidelines in their interactions with customers.  

💰 Adopt conversational commerce 

Use conversational commerce techniques to turn customer interactions into sales opportunities. Offer product recommendations based on purchase history or browsing behavior. 

📈 Evaluate and improve 

Continuously monitor customer feedback and service metrics to improve the customer experience setting up regular feedback surveys, monitoring social media mentions and analyzing customer interactions. 

Wrapping Up

In today’s world, you cannot just choose one type of customer service and expect your customers to be happy. There needs to be an ecosystem of different customer service types because your customers are spread across channels and have their own preferences. To cater to all of them, you need to be ubiquitous. And to be ubiquitous, you need software that could be ubiquitous, like Sprinklr Service, which allows you to: 

• Cater to 30+ traditional and modern support channels 
• Eliminate point-solution chaos and gain 33% lowered support costs 
• Leverage an industry-leading AI model enriched with Generative AI 
• Interweave conversations across social, email, community, phone and messaging platforms for seamless experiences that win trust and hearts with one masterstroke 

Here’s the icing on the cake: Sprinklr Service is available for a 30-day, full-featured trial for select users. Go ahead, grab your trial and go ubiquitous today