Another big difference between my heretical philosophy on customer experience and the norm: I typically emphasize expanding the customer base over loyalty, and acquiring new customers over retention. Why?

First, the evidence shows that brands grow through broadening the base not deepening loyalty, plus the Law of Double Jeopardy means bigger brands have more loyal customers anyway.

But why not expand the base by focusing on retention? Surely only idiots pour water into a leaky bucket? Isn't retention way more cheaperer?

While retention is important these arguments skip some crucial points:

1. Retention is often beyond our control. Loyal, happy customers can still stop buying. They might relocate, get fired, die, etc. They also don’t buy more than they need. Counterintuitively, a focus on loyalty be very high risk.

2. Acquisition is usually a bigger opportunity. If you have 2% market share and half your customers leave each year, if you retain them ALL they only represent 1% market share. But if that’s an industry wide pattern, that means 50% market share is up for grabs through acquisition. The opportunity is 50x bigger!

3. New customers drive word of mouth not long-term loyalists because we share the news, not the olds!

#customerexperience #cx #marketing

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