Customer Service Strategy: Creating an Effective Framework

Customer service strategy should be viewed as a core business lever because it directly influences revenue, loyalty, and brand reputation. A well-defined customer service strategy helps companies stay ahead of rising expectations and digital complexity.

Too many organizations still view it reactively instead of the priority it is. According to Gartner, more than 60% of leaders believe their company prioritizes short-term financial results over customer concerns. So, customer service interactions remain a high-effort process for clients.  

It can’t continue. In 2023, McKinsey highlighted the difference between fast-moving companies adapting operations for better, AI-driven customer care and those struggling to thread together a patchwork of systems. The analyst concludes its comparison with this statement: “Unsure where to put their dollars,[companies in the slow lane] are trapped in a cycle of continual system adaptation with no clear destination or road map.”

Today’s modern customer service needs to be propelled by a thoughtful, defined strategy that uses data and journey insights, is supported by technology and then measured against KPIs. This article walks through how to build a customer service strategy framework that is effective and proactive vs. ineffective and reactive. Let’s start with a few definitions. 

Defining Customer Service Strategy vs.Customer Service Framework

A modern customer service strategy is the what — the high-level goals, principles, and vision for an organization’s customer service.

A customer service strategy should:

• Anticipate customer needs—not just react to issues
• Empower teams with the tools and data they need
• Scale across channels and partner organizations 
• Use automation and AI to improve speed, effectiveness and personalization
• Be continuously refined based on real-time insights and performance metrics

A customer service framework is the how — the structured methods and tools used to implement that strategy effectively and consistently.

Key Features of a Modern Customer Service Strategy

Alignment with business goals

Business goals should drive a company’s customer service strategy. All performance metrics and priorities should map directly to the bottom line.

Customer expectations

In OvationCXM’s Business Banking Customer Experience Report, the data showed different age groups, business sizes and banking customer bases have wildly different desires for customer service and support. If you don’t personalize service delivery for the unique profile of your customers, you may implement inappropriate tactics that lead to unhappy customers, the exact opposite of what you are trying to achieve.

Use customer surveys, journey mapping sessions and real-time data from a CX management platform and legacy systems to figure out customer preferences and frustrations. Consider an orchestration layer that can centralize customer interaction and partner data into a single, more holistic profile so you have the full story before determining what customers want. 

Channel strategy

Learn how customers use different channels and how each tie to a business outcome. What channels do they ignore? Why - friction? Confusion? Lack of features? How can you best optimize those channels? Ensure they work seamlessly with others? Expand or change them to better meet customer expectations? Can you improve the channels they are using? For instance, do customers want more self-service options like chat or knowledge portals?

The next question is whether you can provide customer services that span these channels so service is uninterrupted and customes don't have to repeat themselves or start over in every interaction. In our research, we discovered that more than 90% of business banking customers repeat the same information or resubmit documents they already have when seeking customer support. That's unacceptable and a recipe for disaster.

Support volume forecasting

Can you plan ahead for customer service volume to ensure you aren’t overstaffed or understaffed?  What does the historical data indicate? How does seasonality, like year-end or tax deadlines, change support volume? Does the company have upcoming UI or product updates planned? Pricing changes? Promotional campaigns? Are there other upcoming changes that could drive more traffic to your contact center? Having a calendar of past and upcoming events can indicate times volumes may rise or fall.

Customer service staffing

Outside of the organization’s customer service team, are there additional roles that typically provide customer service or support? What roles are involved? What skills does it require? Could those support needs be proactively addressed with more detailed instructions or a knowledge portal, for example? How does the organization scale up and down as needed to meet support volumes today? Is it working?

One big question today is how can AI be used to streamline customer service and advance team productivity. Where are the opportunities to incorporate AI most easily, with the least amount of risk? What are the high-cost functions that would deliver cost savings most rapidly if AI took over some of the work? How will the company repurpose employees or provide them with new skills and training to manage AI work? 

Technology stack

CRM, ticketing systems, journey builder tools, knowledge bases, chatbots, automation tools, AI analytics, customer portals and dashboards should be working together to support workflows. 

One way to do this is to integrate each data store into a single orchestration layer, like a CX platform, that aggregates it and provides tools, all in one place to take actionas needed. Forrester notes that swivel chair inefficiency, created by the constant switching between systems and data replicated in multiple places, costs employees up to two hours a day in productivity. 

Service level agreements (SLAs)

Does your customer service strategy consider established internal and external targets for response times, resolution times, and escalation paths? How will it address customer service issues that arise from interactions with partners or outside vendors?

Escalation paths

What will support look like across different tiers or problems? What types of issues will be escalated and when? Who will handle escalations and then monitor them to address ongoing friction and the need to adjust service journey steps?

Measurement and KPIs

What are the metrics that best align with business outcomes? CSAT? NPS? First contact resolution (FCR)? CES? Churn rate? Share of wallet? Cost per contact? Since the goal of a customer service strategy is to improve customer experiences, Forrester recommends including customer-centric KPIs with more traditional operational metrics.

Compliance and risk

This is vitally important in all industries, but more so in complex, highly regulated industries like banking. Having data available to identify red flags early on within the organization or with partner interactions will be critical. What systems, people and processes need to be included to ensure customer service meets compliance standards?

5 Steps to Building an Effective Customer Service Framework 

In an era where 91% of businesses report frustration from repeating information and 25% abandon onboarding altogether, it’s no longer enough to treat customer service as a reactive function. 

Enterprises, including complex industries like financial services, must bring their customer service strategy and bring it to life through an actionable, cross-functional customer service framework that anticipates needs, eliminates friction, and creates seamless journeys across people, systems, and partners.

1. Align service strategy with business goals

This starts with data and customer feedback. What does excellent service look like for your organization, and does that align with your customers’ view too? It must. 

How does customer service support relationship growth, retention and revenue? Put this down on paper. This vision will be the north star for your service strategy and will anchor it to overall CX and business strategies. It will also serve as a roadmap to necessary investments in tools and technologies.

2. Evaluate the customer journey, end to end

Map the full lifecycle—sales, onboarding, issue resolution and renewals. Learn where data and information silos, handoffs, or communication gaps slow things down or worse yet, lead to spikes in attrition.

 3. Use tools, technology and AI to design better journeys

Today’s customer journeys are no longer linear—they don’t go from point A to B to C every single time. And modern journeys are rarely managed by one department or platform anymore as partners help companies speed up innovation by fulfilling some steps in a journey.

These fragmented silos lead to swivel chair operations and more importantly, a frustrating experience for customers when agents have to ask them again and again for information already stored somewhere in the enterprise. 

A CX orchestration platform like OvationCXM modernizes this chaotic service delivery. Orchestration platforms pull customer information together from all of the places it's stored into a single screen providing:

• Real-time visibility into journey steps, current status and cross-department and partner activity
• AI insights that suggest next-best actions and automate steps 
• Seamless handoffs across internal departments and third-party partners thanks to a holistic view. 

4. Equip support teams with context around customer activity

Support teams empowered with data can deliver exceptional service. Full visibility into a customer’s journey, transaction history, communication threads and journey status enables them to confidently answer questions quickly because the knowledge is right in front of them.

Unfortunately, research shows that 56% of businesses interact with 2–3 banking departments to solve a single issue. This is likely true of other industries that have complex value chains, especially those with external partners who engage with clients.

5. Expand customer service metrics  - look at the whole picture

According to Forrester, companies should not limit performance tracking to single touch points, But that’s what’s commonly done. Instead, the analyst recommends tracking three different types of CX metrics. 

Perception metrics: This is what customers feel about your CX. It’s most often captured through direct feedback, such as surveys, call recordings, reviews or social media comments.

Outcome metrics: These metrics track whether a customer completed a desired action after their experience. It is measured in things like churn, activations and onboarding completions.

Interaction metrics: This indicator captures specifics like wait times and first call resolution.

These metrics should measure the CX beyond touch points to include the entire relationship and journey. Together, these measurements provide a more comprehensive view of CX performance.

Key Questions to Ask When Building Your Service Strategy

Here are critical questions every leadership team should answer before designing a service strategy:

1. What role does service play in our brand promise?
   
   
2. What are the most critical journeys our customers take, and where do they encounter friction?
   
   
3. What channels are most used—and most effective—for service delivery?
   
   
4. How do we currently measure service performance, and do those metrics reflect customer success?
   
   
5. Where are our biggest gaps in visibility, automation, and consistency across service journeys? Do we need additional technology to solve these gaps?
   
   
6. What skills and tools do our agents need to deliver excellent service today—and tomorrow?

Bonus: Overcoming Legacy Infrastructure in Your Customer Service Strategy

Did you know? Just 9% of financial institutions have seen significant revenue gains from digital transformation efforts, according to Cornerstone Advisors. The reason? Most banks are still held back by legacy infrastructure—rigid systems that limit visibility, slow innovation, and isolate customer data in departmental silos.

But the solution isn’t a rip-and-replace overhaul. It starts with bringing technology leaders, operations teams, and customer-facing functions into the same conversation. A successful customer service strategy needs more than vision—it requires a shared understanding of how technology can unlock it. When complex enterprises, like banks, align around platforms that integrate with legacy systems—rather than replace them—they uncover new possibilities:

• Real-time visibility across journeys and departments
• AI-driven insights that optimize workflows
• Seamless collaboration between teams and third-party partners

McKinsey has found that banks that integrate CX tools into existing infrastructures can reduce service costs by 20% and increase customer satisfaction by 30%.

The takeaway?

Build your strategy with both people and platforms in mind. When you connect the right voices across the organization and invest in technology that layers onto your existing infrastructure, you can modernize customer experience—without waiting for a complete system overhaul.

Because in today’s ecosystem-driven world, the future of CX belongs to the institutions that can orchestrate it.

Final Thoughts: Customer Service Strategy Is A Growth Strategy

Customer service isn’t just an operational function—it’s a revenue driver. When built strategically, it reduces churn, jumpstarts loyalty and increases customer value.

Organizations that treat service as a product vs. an afterthought will stand out, impacting business outcomes.

OvationCXM helps financial institutions and service-intensive businesses like payments and commerce, retail and healthcare orchestrate complex customer journeys in real time. We start by offering journey mapping sessions that help uncover specific journeys that would impact business outcomes most quickly if friction could be removed. 

Explore our platform or schedule a demo to see how journey orchestration can modernize your customer service delivery.