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CX Leader on How To Create Loyal Customers And Gain New Ones

Headshot of guest influencer Dan Gingiss
Kyle Rich profile picture
By Dan Gingiss

and Kyle Rich
Published
7 min read
Header image for the blog article "Customer Experience Expert Discusses How Businesses Can Keep Consumers and Gain New Ones"

Customer experience expert, Dan Gingiss, provides his own advice and framework on how SMBs can keep customers while also gaining new ones.

/ An interview with Dan Gingiss

The following summarizes an interview facilitated by Capterra team member Kyle Rich and CX expert Dan Gingiss. This conversation was edited for length and clarity.

The equation is simple: To grow your business, you need to keep current customers while also adding to your customer base. Working against that, though, is the “leaky bucket theory.” 

The theory analogy is that companies constantly lose customers, and the only way to maintain market share is to add as many new customers to keep your bucket full. In order to continually increase your market share, you need to be great at customer acquisition or at least know how to slow the leak. 

Small and midsize B2B companies often suffer from problematic leaks because they spend more time and money on sales and marketing than they do on their existing customers, points out Dan Gingiss, an international keynote speaker, coach, author, and podcast host. Gingiss recently shared his expertise with us on how to create better customer experiences so that the leak becomes insignificant.

One of the pieces of advice that I love to give to people is always become a customer of your own company, because that is the best way to truly see it in the customer's eyes.

Headshot of guest influencer Dan Gingiss

Dan Gingiss

Customer experience expert

In fact, Gingiss suggests using your own platform to gauge user experience. If you feel confused or think your product isn’t intuitive, your customers likely feel the same way. This kind of experience is what can lead to your business losing customers. 

When customers leave a company, some might leave with a bang, telling you everything you did wrong. Which, according to Gingiss, can be a great opportunity for your business because you have the information to help fix the problem. 

On the other hand, some customers will leave quietly. This can be even more detrimental for your business because you’re not sure of the problem, so it can be tricky to find the solution. This is why it’s just as important to find ways to keep your current customers happy as it is to work on gaining new customers. 

Focus as much on retention as on sales

According to Gingiss, companies need to find a balance in which they put as much effort into the customers they already have as they do into their sales efforts. Those customers are keeping the lights on and paying the salaries. The longer customers stay, the more likely they are to increase their spending and become referral candidates.

What will help you keep more of your customers, as well as encourage them to tout your capabilities to other potential customers, is to create a remarkable experience. In short, you need to stand out from the competition.

Customers only share two kinds of experiences. They share really good ones and really bad ones… Nobody's ever said, ‘Let me tell you about a perfectly average restaurant I went to last night.’

Dan Gingiss

Wit is wisdom, in moderation at least

Gingiss believes that one of the best ways that you can improve your marketing and improve your sales is by creating remarkable experiences so that your customers are talking about you.

As it happens, Gingiss has written and talked about just how to do that, and it all comes wrapped in a useful acronym he created—WISER—which stands for witty, immersive, shareable, extraordinary, and responsive.

Wiser graphic for the blog article "Customer Experience Expert Discusses How Businesses Can Keep Consumers and Gain New Ones"

The “witty” in WISER is not about turning your company into a comedy production. It’s about having a little more fun, being a bit more lighthearted, and being clever. Or, as Gingiss puts it, “refusing to be boring.”

One example is found at Gingiss’s own website where, if you enter a URL wrong and get his 404 error page, there is a fun graphic, a witty message, and a button to return you to the home page.

Screenshot from Gingiss's website for the blog article "Customer Experience Expert Discusses How Businesses Can Keep Consumers and Gain New Ones"

Credit: Dan Gingiss (Source)

Similar methods could be employed in privacy policies, terms and conditions, physical signs, virtual signs on a website or mobile app, blog posts, and more. Any time you communicate with customers or potential customers, you have the opportunity to be more fun, be more human, and remind people why they would want to do business with you. Be subtle; don’t go overboard—but don’t be afraid to put a human face to your company.

You can’t leak too much if you have immersion

The “immersive” part of WISER is a bit more complicated but a big part of it is creating a very consistent experience from beginning to end in experiences with your company. For example, it could be smooth handoffs between a salesperson and a customer success team or the process of obtaining, using, updating and maintaining a product from your company. It can also be how seamlessly you build your service or product. Here are some questions Gingiss says we can ask:

  • How do I feel when I'm using your platform? 

  • Are the instructions complicated? 

  • Are there any video tutorials?

  • Who can I ask for help?

Brand consistency is also important to an immersive experience because it helps create a sense of cohesion and comfort for the customer. 

Sharing is caring—about your customers and your future

As we get to the midpoint of the WISER framework with the “S,” we are actually talking about an endpoint as well.

“Shareable is the end goal. Because we want people to talk about us,” Gingiss says. “We want to create this word of mouth, but it doesn't happen by accident. To be shareable, we have to be strategic. It doesn't happen just because we ask people. In fact, asking people to share often results in inauthentic sharing.”

The key is to get people to want to share, and much of that is finding the right moments in the customer experience to give them the opportunity to share.

The best time to ask for customer feedback is after a positive experience. For example, after someone has successfully redeemed points or cashback from their credit card provides a great opportunity for feedback. According to Gingiss, that is the type of transaction and experience that can get your customers talking about your company. 

Don’t be ordinary; be extra

The next-to-last letter in WISER brings us to “extraordinary.” Simply put: Find the thing that you do just a little better than your competition.

For B2B, much of what we do is based on the competition. The idea is often that if they're doing it, then we should do the same thing. That's never going to stand out. Find those opportunities to kick it up a notch and be better.

Dan Gingiss

Sometimes it is as simple as branding. In a world where blue dominates as the color chosen by banking institutions, Discover chose orange. Extraordinary doesn’t have to be mind-blowing. It simply needs to be more than ordinary.

Often a company will assume its service or product speaks for itself. But the problem with that is that over time, competitors' products might be getting better while the company’s product might be staying the same. Find the ways to highlight to your customers why staying with you is better than going to the competition.

/ Tip

Find the ways to highlight to your customers why staying with you is better than going to the competition.

And if your team is looking for a third-party perspective, you can consult with a branding agency to freshen up your value propositions. Learn more about what a branding agency can do for you, here.

Wrapping it up with responsiveness

In a sense, the R is separate from the rest of WISER because, as Gingiss notes, being “responsive” is what happens after you have been “wise.” He gives an example of social media:

“To create word-of-mouth marketing, we need to be involved in conversations,” says Gingiss. “ If a client posts a story on LinkedIn about doing business with you, then you better have someone on your team ready to respond and thank them.”

It's much like when people on Twitter comment on a brand or a celebrity, and then they unexpectedly get a response back. That makes them feel special. In the B2B space, the sharing is not usually as public, and it may not be via social media.

“But if you are not acknowledging when a customer refers you to somebody else, that's a missed opportunity,” Gingiss warns. “One referral could turn into 10 referrals. We want them to refer to us constantly. I make a huge deal to acknowledge such things.”

Get WISER. Grow faster.

The WISER framework helps to create superb customer experiences. That makes customers want to talk about you. That, in turn, makes you more referable and helps your sales teams. With all that, you won’t need to worry as much whether your bucket is leaky because it will be full enough to keep you going and keep you growing.

Making the case for remarkable

As Dan Gingiss notes, many B2Bs struggle with trying to find case studies and generate testimonials. The problem generally lies in the lack of a remarkable customer experience.

On the other hand, when your business is providing something memorable, customers will voluntarily provide testimonials or leave favorable reviews. And that kind of customer response extends beyond written or recorded testimonials and case studies. That authenticity means a loyal customer base and an increased possibility of turning their friends and colleagues into a new sale.

Need help exploring the best customer experience software or want to learn more? Our Customer Experience Software Buyer’s Guide can explain the benefits, features, and cost of CX software and our Customer Experience Software Shortlist can get you started with top-rated solutions.


Looking for Customer Experience software? Check out Capterra's list of the best Customer Experience software solutions.

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About the Authors

Headshot of guest influencer Dan Gingiss

Dan Gingiss is an international keynote speaker and coach. His 20-year professional career has included leadership positions at McDonald’s, Discover, and Humana. He is the author of two books, The Experience Maker and Winning at Social Customer Care, and co-hosts the award-winning Experience This! podcast.

Kyle Rich profile picture

Kyle Rich is a Content Strategist at Capterra. He has created and managed content for over 10 years, with a specialty in technology content that helps inform and educate users through their customer journey. For fun, Kyle enjoys exploring new hiking trails and restaurants in and around Austin, TX.

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