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

POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE (RESPONSE AND RESPONSIVENESS)

Customer service and servicing customers are not necessarily the same. Whereas the former conjures up images of well-trained, eloquent support staff located somewhere in India, the latter is typically associated with some kind of in-store or face-to-face transaction. The former is exceptionally process-driven, with well-oiled yet stale scripts adhering to dotted i’s and crossed t’s; the latter is more of an art form, with loosely followed and often unpredictable results. Of course, there is crossover, for example, when the customer-service agent on the other end of the phone goes off script in the worst possible way and subsequently loses it with you and somehow takes offense at your raised voice and tonality—forgetting, for a moment, exactly what they do for a living and the reason you’re calling—and consequently hangs up on you because you said something heinous like “bullshit.” (The preceding story may or may not have happened to me about a thousand times.)