Marketing isn’t just about new customer acquisition. Your marketing team should also be focused on surprising, delighting and growing your existing customers.
A great customer experience isn't just about retaining business. It's also a much more effective way to grow than chasing new leads. Yet most companies overlook this and put all of their efforts into ‘net new’ opportunities.
We spoke to two of our experienced Marketing Directors - Hari Farzin and Mark Pearson - about how improving customer experience can reduce churn, generate referrals, and increase revenue, all while lowering your marketing costs. Here’s what they had to say.
You don’t need a degree in behavioural psychology to know that happy customers are more likely to stick around. But the benefits don’t stop at retention.
“A trusted recommendation carries a lot more weight than any marketing you could ever do,” said Hari. “A happy customer doesn't just stay longer. They refer you to other potential customers, talk about you, and take you with them when they move.”
Mark agreed:
“Cross-selling and upselling is a lot easier with happy customers. And advocacy - customers actively recommending you - is the ultimate way to win work. It reduces your marketing costs and brings in new business organically, often with a shorter sales cycle.”
Despite all this, most SMEs focus on winning new customers instead of improving the experience for their existing ones.
“SMEs are so focused on delivering their product or service that they forget about the experience,” Hari explained. “They’ll pour energy into acquiring customers but then lose them because onboarding wasn’t handled properly, or they didn’t fully deliver.”
Mark recalled running a workshop for 40 SME business owners and asking a simple question:
“Who here regularly speaks to their customers to get feedback? Not one hand went up.”
Instead of listening to customers and proactively gathering insights, many businesses assume they know what their customers think and want. Often these assumptions are wrong, and as a result, they default to doing things the way they always have, rather than looking for opportunities to surprise and delight.
You don’t need a customer experience team or a pricey agency to get started. Just pick up the phone.
“Start by listening,” said Hari. “Surveys are great, but even a short call can tell you a lot. Think about the journey. Look for friction points. Identify missed opportunities to add value.”
Mark shared a practical tip:
“Try to call one a week. Ask three simple questions that matter to your business right now. Write down the answers. You’ll quickly spot patterns and improvements that cost nothing but have a big impact.”
And if you’re worried a customer might not be happy? Call them anyway.
“Let them vent,” said Mark. “You’ll learn something. And if you respond well, you can turn it around and build real loyalty.”
Listening is just the first step. The real value comes from what you do with what you hear. Hari gave several examples of how customer feedback had shaped client strategies:
“In one case, we used the feedback as a hook - offering the client a platform to share their story publicly,” Hari said. “It built the relationship and gave us great content we could use with others.”
Mark shared a success story from an IT services client:
“Customers kept saying the service wasn’t available early enough in the day. So we shifted opening hours by an hour - no cost, no big change. That change had a huge impact on the customer experience, because now customers could call as early as they wanted to, instead of waiting for 9 am to discuss issues and orders.”
Customer experience isn’t just a marketing issue. It touches every part of the business.
“Customer experience, brand experience and staff culture are three sides of the same coin,” Mark said. “If your internal culture doesn’t match your sales process and wider value proposition, it will show.”
In one client project, Mark introduced “gates” between departments during the sales and delivery process. Each handoff required key criteria to be met, so nothing fell through the cracks as the customer was passed from one team to another.
The result:
“Customers don’t care which department does what. They just want it all to work,” said Mark. “So your systems, people and processes all need to be aligned with one another. Because from the customer’s perspective, it’s all just one thing."
Not sure where to start? Here are five things you can do now:
“Don't assume you know what your customers value,” Hari warned. “Even when they tell you, you need to dig deeper.”
“If you build a consistent experience across brand, systems and people,” added Mark, “you don’t just keep customers, you create advocates.”
Customer experience isn’t just about retention. When done well, it generates new business too.
“I’ve worked in businesses where 15% of new leads came from people moving jobs and taking us with them,” Hari said. “That’s the power of getting this right.”
Want to turn your customer experience into a growth engine? Talk to one of our experienced Marketing Directors about where to start.