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

VALUE FOR MONEY IS AS MUCH A PRODUCT OF CUSTOMER SERVICE AS IT IS ABOUT PRODUCT QUALITY

Whichever way you look at it (and I’ll do that in more detail shortly), churn is directly related to our inability to overdeliver or our propensity to underdeliver, relative to our customers’ expectations of how they deserve to be treated in the first place. There’s no reason for a customer to leave if they feel that they’re treated well, appreciated, and getting their money’s worth (value). To that end, the very interpretation of value becomes so much more than just objective evaluation (product intrinsics). Rather, it is a host of personal, emotional, and subjective factors, including—but not limited to—how customers are treated and appreciated.

How many times have you lobbed the kiss-of-death threat (or bluff) at a service provider? From the “I’ll take my business elsewhere” ultimatum to the less forgiving “you’ve just lost a customer,” our ability to retain customers, loyalty, and repeat business will always be closely linked to our ability to treat them as we would expect to be treated in return. And though this may sound painfully obvious and elementary, it is somehow completely bypassed when we play the numbers game and reduce our customers to figures and data points.

So what can you do about it? For starters, when customers threaten to take their business elsewhere, don’t attempt to call what you may perceive to be a bluff; instead shift gears into high defense and open up a new ...