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

CUSTOMER SERVICE IS EVERYTHING (THAT INFLUENCES CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE)

Any interaction that influences customers’ experience with the company, brand, product, or service is part of an elaborate tapestry that builds or breaks the bonds between all involved.

Following from this assertion, three key questions and/or marketing implications emerge:

1. To what extent should customer service remain part of the marketing department’s area of responsibility (if at all)?

2. To what extent could customer service end up reviving, reinvigorating, or downright SAVING an otherwise tired and depleted marketing function and capability?

3. . . . and in doing so, create the kind of effectiveness, differentiation, and growth driver capable of achieving sustainable competitive advantage?

The answers to the questions above are really open-ended hypotheses that you’ll need to explore through first-hand, tangible implementation, proof of concept activation, and structural or process redesign. However the text that follows should provide fairly clear illumination of which path to pursue and how to pursue it.