What is a customer delight?

A customer delight can be a digital or physical thing, or something you do (a service) to create a spark of joy for a customer. It can be something like an extra donut you put in for a loyal customer at your bakery shop, or a surprise discount at the register.

Basically a customer delight is anything that your customer wasn’t expecting, but gives them that feel good feeling with you and your company.
The expectancy element is what makes the difference between a customer delight and plain old fashioned good customer service.

Why bother with customer delights?

You may be asking yourself, why even bother with customer delights when you could just focus on providing quality customer service. And you’d be right to a certain extent – high quality, personable customer service is the foundation of building a loyal base of customers/fans.

However, while quality customer service gives you the one up on your competition, customers… can get used to it. If everytime they come into your store, order from you online, you provide them with fantastic customer service, it will lose it’s impact over time. It will be come expected. Will it still serve you over an experience they had with a competitor that was sub par – absolutely! Will it continue to wow them over extended periods of time? No, not really. It will only set you up to do better than the guys who don’t care. And there’s a lot to be said for that, but that… is not providing customer delights.

Customer delights are the content that drives a raving fan base. They can be small and inexpensive, but they have got to evoke that feeling of “wow” in your clients. Wow, unexpected, interesting, or entertaining. It has to feel like you hooked them up with something amazing. A surprise win.

Examples of customer delights.

I went into my local Dunkin’ Donuts after my kids’ swim practice because the youngest needed to use the bathroom. She was not gonna make it home. I became a bit frazzled, trying to avoid disaster, and saw the Dunkin’ Donuts, parked, and we bee lined it for their restrooms. And of course we ordered after – because… Dunkin’ Donuts. The kids got to pick their donuts and I ordered a drink and that could have been the end of it. But after we checked out the cashier said he put an extra donut in for mom. I was so appreciative. That donut probably cost them 10 cents. It was also later in the day, around 6, so how many more were they going to sell. But guess what. I got a surprise free thing and most importantly here – I felt appreciated.

From a customer’s point of view, I got a free unexpected thing, and I felt seen (overstimulated mom just trying to do something nice for her kids). And you better believe I enjoyed that donut.

It can happen in an online space too. Imagine purchasing filament for your new 3D printer, and they send you free samples of related colors to try out along with your order.

And it doesn’t have to be a physical product. Giving away a related PDF to the one you bought, a link to a related webinar or video you’ve previously recorded, or even just a link to a video showing how to put the PDF content into action.

It just needs to be something that goes above and beyond. Something that makes the purchase that much sweeter.

So how do you come up with the ideas?

Sometimes it’s as simple as reading the moment. What does this person right in front of you need? What complements what they are buying? What would help their current situation?

If it’s online/digital sales, you can pull the information after the fact:

• What was in their cart? What would help them take the next steps?
• Did they leave you any comments? If they emailed you, what was it they needed help with?
• Could you call them and ask them about the product or what they are getting stuck on? Is there something you can add a service or personal touch to?
  • Sometimes just calling someone and saying something along the lines of “Hey David, I’m Wendy, the owner of CreationDepot, and I just wanted to call you quickly to see if you had any questions or troubles implementing that new content calendar. I’m happy to brainstorm some ideas with you to get you started!”

Pulling From Previous Sales

And if you’ve been doing this a long time, you probably (or you should implement this right now so future you has this) have access to client feedback. If 1 person out of 20 lets you know something good or bad about your product, that’s absolute gold. Those feedback mechanisms will tell you where you can make more money, how you can better serve people with general customer service, better products, etc., but also what the missing pieces are. Where you can insert a personal touch to get folks to make that connection to you and your product or service.

Pissed off customers give the best feedback. Happy customers will sometimes leave glowing reviews but maybe also leave 1 or 2 little nuggets about something that didn’t go quite right, but your customer service saved the day.

Act on those.

Those little inconveniences are what will take a casual or one time customer and bring them into your sphere again and again.

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Have a great day guys!

• Wendy