Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IS NOT CUSTOMER SERVICE

Customer-service is just one component—albeit a very important one—of the customer wheel. In keeping with the metaphor, it’s the grease or oil that keeps the wheel turning smoothly. As the mantra goes, “The squeaky wheel gets the oil,” and this couldn’t be more appropriate or accurate when it comes to customer service. That said, there’s so much more involved in tapping into and leveraging existing customers in order to gain new ones, increase sales, and ultimately grow your business. In the musty world of advertising, there’s an absolutely correct saying that everything communicates. The logic can be applied to the entire customer-retention process and the ability to create a holistic customer experience that either exceeds or falls short of customer expectations.

In order to truly understand customer experience, it helps to focus on the “experience” part of the phrase. As per www.dictionary.com:

-noun

1. A particular instance of personally encountering or undergoing something: My encounter with the bear in the woods was a frightening experience.

2. The process or fact of personally observing, encountering, or undergoing something: business experience.

3. The observing, encountering, or undergoing of things generally as they occur in the course of time: to learn from experience; the range of human experience.

4. Knowledge or practical wisdom gained from what one has observed, encountered, or undergone: a man of experience.

5. Philosophy. ...