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

Foreword

I had a simple question for eBay about one of their policies. A simple, specific question. So I sent them an e-mail. They sent me back an e-mail. It was obviously preforumulated, although it started with my name. That’s great. Awesome! They know my name! How did they do that? And it was a pretty great-looking e-mail. High-fives around the conference room when they banged that one out. It was chock-full of helpful information, and there were so many different questions it could have answered. They probably thought it was super efficient, because you have one thing that does all these different things. Unfortunately, out of all the questions it answered, none of them was mine. I asked for an apple, they gave me an orange, and I’m supposed to be happy because it’s a fruit. Now, to make matters worse, after getting this non-helpful e-mail, I wrote back to say hey, you didn’t answer my question. They didn’t respond to this second e-mail, but they did send me a survey. They wanted me to rate my interaction. And I’m like, awesome. So I’m going through this survey, checking off every box to say, “You guys suck, and you suck, and you suck and you suck.” And in the middle of the survey, it malfunctions. Their customer service is so bad that it even gets wrong me telling it how bad it is.

Processing is not solving. If a supposed solution uses automation to get through more of your customer input faster while fixing fewer problems, it’s not a solution, it’s a failure.

The reason ...