The most common goal for customer experience programs is improving retention and loyalty. Why? One reason I hear all the time is that loyal customers will tell people about our brand and help us grow. Let me stop you right there.

In reality, loyal, long-term customers do relatively little promoting compared to new customers for one fairly obvious reason - we share the news not the olds. Think about it.

Why would we randomly start telling people about products we've used for years? We don't often do that because we take them for granted. Instead, we tell people about new discoveries and recent events because they're novel and interesting.

There's a ton of implications but here's the big one: a great discovery, sales and on-boarding experience doesn’t just help you win one customer, it can help you create an acquisition and growth machine.

Example: I recently became a Kiehl’s customer after a great in-store experience. I wouldn’t shut up about it and now my wife and friends are becoming customers too. One great acquisition experience creates even more acquisition.

If you're growth-minded then, ask yourselves:

Are we too focused on retention?
How good is our discovery, sales and first time customer experience?

It might be time to change tack!

See this post on LinkedIn