How to Delight Customers:27 Best Ways

Increasing customer happiness is the lifeblood of any profit-seeking organization. It is the trump card of business success whether you’re selling products or giving service. The article” How to Delight Customers:27 Best Ways” shows the real picture.

Creating customer Delight is not a mere thing to keep customers satisfied but to generate more profits and retain customers for a lifetime. It becomes 5 times more costly to make new customers. Customer Delight Training opens new horizons for business concerns.

How to be delightful is a trick that provides you with ample opportunities to expand your business while introducing diversified products to existing customers.

What is Customer Delight?

Customers become happy when you come up to their expectations but they become delighted when you deliver more than their expectations. A good customer experience leads to build an emotional relationship and increases marketing effectiveness. Customer Centric approach makes the customers loyal to your brand.

What is Customer Experience?

Customer Experience is everything related to business that affects customer’s perception and feeling about it. Customer Experience also known as ”CX” builds your business image in the customer’s mind. It is how a customer finds your business. A good customer experience delights your customer and leads him to become brand ambassador of your business.

What is a delight in Customer Service? The best example.

If a service provider meets his customers’ expectations up to the requirements, he satisfies them but if the Customers are served more than the requirements they get delighted. Today delight needs in marketing more than ever.

Ritz Carlton, the leading name in the hotel industry, takes customer delighting very seriously. Every employee of the hotel is provided with a budget of $2000 to spend on creating customers delight.

How a Customer can be Surprised and Delighted?

Spending some budget for customers’ happiness is a positive stance but a lot of other acts can be performed to delight customers without spending a single penny.

Successful firms focus their efforts on satisfying customer needs that create value for the customers. A good shout-out can be given to clients where they are most active. Using social media channels, a customer can be admired for doing something awesome. Giving this value to a customer delights him.

A customer needs to be wished with a bouquet of flowers and greeting card on the eve of his/her birthday, anniversary, or some other memorable event. Building such kind of association makes the customer very much delighted. It is a two-way approach. If a customer becomes delighted he becomes brand loyal. Brand loyalty generates more sales.

Try your best to give a detailed and comprehensive answer to your customer for a query. A blog post can be written and an email can be sent to clear his ambiguities. The customer feels very happy with this sharing and linking. Being a good marketer you should always realize to your customer that you are delightful due to his happiness.

How do You create delight for Customers?

Always be Customer Centric

Customer Centricity must be the pivot point of your services. Being customer centric means you need to put the customer first and the center of everything. Customer is a living asset of your business. He can spread both positive as well as negative word of mouth about your business. Now it depends upon you to come up with customer centric definition.

Try your best to understand Customers’ Needs

A good marketer has the capability to understand customer needs. Asking relevant questions from the customers helps you to understand their needs properly. Don’t try to stuff customers with unnecessary information. Providing them the solutions to their problems may delight customers.

Always Meet the Deadlines

Being a businessman or marketer you are always required to be true to the deadlines given to the customers. Your commitment tries to build a good relationship and creates value for the customers.

Address Pain points of Your Customers

You should address the pain points of your customers as a top priority as it helps you in creating customer delight. Always try your best to address their issues without any delay. Most of the times customers are very sensitive about their pain points. They need someone badly to hear them. If you give them time apart from formalities they get delighted. Giving customers due importance creates value for the customers.

Give a positive gesture to customers’ Feedback

Customers’ feedback is the lifeblood of any organization. Listening positively to the aggrieved and dissatisfied customers shows your seriousness towards their point of view. Moreover taking customers’ feedback while introducing a new product range creates value for the customers as well.

Provide Quality Services

Satisfying customer with standard service is the first stage. While surprising customers with augmented services leads towards customers’ delight. So, it is the need of the hour to provide quality services for converting one-time customers into lifetime customers.

Show enthusiasm and be readily available to cope with the problems

Successful firms focus their efforts on satisfying customer needs that impart a good impression on customers. A lethargic attitude dissatisfies the customers and a dissatisfied customer takes no time to switch his loyalty. Enthusiasm and a readily available attitude always create value for the customers.

Which Framework is called Pillar of Customers Service?

Customers service is gaining popularity day by day. The importance of customers service can not be denied due to ever-increasing competition. It takes 5-25 times more cost to acquire new customers instead of retaining old ones.

Experts have devised a framework that has been named as a pillar of customer service

Relationship with Customers

Professionalism, friendship, and real interest in customers’ problems impart a good impression on customers and create lifetime value for them.

Professional Expertise

You can make some of your customers fool with a gift of gab for sometimes but not all of them for all the time. Your professionalism shows that how much you are sincere with your job as only professionalism can delight customers for a lifetime. Recognizing the Customers’ needs and fulfilling them at the right time creates customer delight.

Be Client Centric

Client Centric approach always produces good results. Desired results can only be achieved by providing quality services. You are required to deliver at any cost what you have promised for. So giving every customer what is due creates better customer service and delights your customer for lifetime.

What are Factors for Customer delight?

Customers satisfaction is a touchstone to measure that how much the customers are satisfied with the overall dealings of an organization. It is a reflection of how happy customer is with your services, business capabilities and products. Here lie three major factors that influence customer delight.

1. Understanding your Customers

Personalizing the buying experience for customer creates a lot of value. He always expects you to recognize Customer needs. He feels convenient to buy from those companies which provide variety in choices and remember their preferences.

Choices

Catering the customers with multiple options for each product and service gives them control over their buying process. Providing the products as per customer needs can delight the customers.

Personalization

Addressing every customer with his name and recalling his product choice builds an emotional association between business and customer.

Stats reveal that 80% of customers are inclined to purchase more if they are provided with a personalized customer experience.

Preferences

Communication with the customers as per their choice, customized payment, and delivery methods are some of the factors which delight the customers and make them loyal to your brand.

2. Service

Quality customer service always wins the customers for a business. A good service can be comprised of the following 3 factors

Convenient

In-time response and simplifications of service are some of the factors which generate a nice personalized user experience. These elements decide that where a customer goes and how much does he buy.

Delivery

A business is required to make a commitment which it can deliver. Too many big claims and not coming up to the expectations might annoy the customers.

3. Technology

Tech-oriented businesses have more chances of customer conversions as compared to brick and mortar models. Websites, apps, and blogs generate a positive impact on user experience. In order to delight customers, the meeting points of the company must be accessible, easy to navigate, and readily available.

Accessible

Your Products and services must be readily available on preferred customer channels. Companies are required to cater to both normal and disable customers equally. If Impaired people of society are actively dealt with, they can generate positive word of mouth for your business.

Quick Page Loading

Research by Neil Patel shows ” a user expects site page to be loaded within 2 seconds.” if it is not, your potential customer can switch easily. Real-time interaction is key to success for your business.

Simple Navigation

Navigation of site must be simpler and easy to use so that every kind of user can visit your store to find a product of his desired choice. Errors in navigation can result in losing clients.

What is the difference between Customers delight and Customer Satisfaction?

Customer satisfaction is all about delivering customers the value which you promised and acquiring organizational goals. Satisfaction appeals to customers practically.

Customer delight involves “giving the customer more than his expectations. It inculcates a good impression in the customer’s mind as he feels overjoyed to know that company knows his needs in a better way and is ready to participate actively. Delight appeals to customers emotionally.

Some real Life examples of Customer’s Delight

1. Nest

Nest is popular for making self-learning digital thermostats. These thermostats can be controlled with the help of Wi-Fi in collaboration with the phone. Scott(the customer) got stuck with the problem of getting only cold air from vents despite setting heat function.

He called on Sunday night at 9 pm and was surprised to talk with a human customer rep instead of a machine. Scott diagnosed the problem of faulty wiring with the help of a customer rep. He was amazed when the company paid the charges of the electrician. This is a great lesson of customers delight for B2B customers.

2. Taco Bell

In 2012 citizens of Bethel, Alaska heard the news of Taco’s opening in the city. It was great good news for the Taco’s lovers as the nearest outlet was situated 400kms away in Anchorage. But the excitement of the citizens was suddenly dashed to the ground when they found opening news a big hoax.

When the company heard about the excitement of its fans it decided to amaze the local dwellers. The company sent a helicopter full of food trucks with sufficient ingredients to create 10,000 free Doritos to Bethel town.

This operation in Alaska was a very successful publicity stunt that created 6000 delighted evangelists.

3. Honda

Members of the Indie Folk band, “Monsters Calling Home” used to record music videos in their Hondas as it was non-affordable for them to record in the studio.

Watching their shoot, Honda executives decided to delight its brand lovers. They booked the band to perform in front of their team members but upon the band’s arrival, the company delighted the performers. It was announced that they were booked for jimmy Kimmel Live.

Why to delight Customers?

Customer satisfaction is not only about building brand image but also promote referral marketing and increasing sales volumes. A delighted customer becomes a viral marketer for your business.

Delighting customers increase brand loyalty. Customers-focused organizations acquire space in customer’s minds instead of pockets.

Customers are the real assets of any business. Market research reveals that 68% of dissatisfied customers don’t hesitate to change their loyalty. They easily switch the brand if they are facing issues with your product or customer service.

Stats show that a happy customer generates 100% positive word of mouth about your product cum service while 48% of customers having a bad customer experience would ultimately spoil 10 or more customers.

How to gauge Customers’ happiness

1. Repeat Purchase

A happy customer is always engaged in recurring purchases. A good customer experience imparts a positive impression of your brand. Even sometimes customers start bulk purchasing.

Researchers are of the view that a mere 5% increase in customer satisfaction leads towards a 75% increase in the profitability ratio of the business.

2. Response in real-time

Today’s hectic job and business routine have engaged you more than ever. Roads have become rushy due to continuously increasing traffic flow. Customers’ expectations towards your business are high.

Customers being consumers and clients require the businessmen to become more responsive. They want real-time answers to the queries made by them and ready-made solutions for their problems.

3. Customers’ Referrals

Customers’ affiliation is a prime indicator to monitor the success of any business. A delightful customer recommends your product and promotes affiliations only at the cost of getting satisfied. Market research indicates that 86% of the customers satisfied with a better customer experience readily pay more.

27 best ways to Delight Customers 

1. Customer Support Service

After sale service converts your one time customers into life time customers. Good companies always add option of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on their website. This act of company let the customers to conversate with the after-sale service team.

The 24/7 online presence of the company delights its customers. They feel satisfied and start recurring purchase. Research shows that 69% of customers are inclined to spend more and get back to purchase more articles offered by the company.

A lot of customers care softwares are readily available in the market. Multi national Corporations (MNCs) using these softwares convert its customers into community. This  family like feeling helps the organisations to build customer equity.

Providing customers with self service facility lead them to resolve their own issues themselves. More than 70% of the customers expect self service portal available on company’s website

2.Social Media Platforms

Today more than 50 percent population of world is availing internet services. World has become global village due to speedy internet services.Social media platforms are one of the biggest source of interaction with customers.

survey shows the customers who come across with your brand on social media spend up to 40% more as compared to the customers purchasing through “Brick and Mortar Model.” Companies like Google are using advanced research tools to monitor customer activities.

Artificial intelligence has made it possible to monitor every tendency of the customers minutely.

3.Interaction via Content Marketing

Sharing in time information which is relevant to your target market builds a good reputation of a company. writing customers interest based blogs and circulating podcasts build a positive image in customers’ eyes.

Marketing experts are of the view, “If you fail to plan then you plan to fail. ” Content Marketing is a key to devise customer-centred inbound marketing plan. A good content marketing strategy pulls more customers and cultivates loyalty.

Customer based content in shape of infographics, videos, articles, product reviews nurture strong emotional relationship between customers and your brand. Engaging customer content lead the customers for repeat buying.

Regular E-mail Marketing and Cold pitch are some of the techniques to engage customers at every step.

4. Collection of Customers’ Feedback

Delighted customers become more associated with the product.  They generate positive word of mouth about your brand in their community. This emotional relationship increases the brand worth of an organization.

In contrary to that an annoyed customer spreads negativity and spoils the company’s image. So to treat both the customers as per requirement is inevitable.

A large no of tools can be availed to collect customers‘ feedback. Phone calls, chat on social media platforms like Facebook, linked in, Twitter, Instagram ensures customers about round the clock presence of the company. They find no hurdles in sharing customers’ experiences with representatives of the company.

Utilizing, “How to Delight Customers:27 Best Ways” build a new range of products and offer to its loyal customers for test marketing. A customer becomes happy if you perform up to his expectations but it becomes delighted if you solve his problem more than his expectations.

70% of aggrieved customers get back to the company if their problems are solved within real time

5.360 Degree Tracking

Continuous analysis helps you to track your customers’ behavior.  Round-the-clock monitoring helps the company to refine its offerings. Tracking customers’ behavior helps the company to become more responsive.

E-commerce stores generate 41% of their revenue from just 8% of customers.

Customers’ insight leads the company to increase contact points as a better contact improves response time. The facility of availing of Chatbots enables the company to anticipate customers’ queries.

e.g the CNN chatbot is the famous one that is used by billions of readers all over the world.

6. Liaison with customers on special occasions

Building long-term relationship with customers is though hectic and time-consuming process. But the extraction of benefits from this process leads the company to generate more revenues.

Wishing your customers an anniversary, birthday and holiday is a feeling that you never forget on special occasions.

7. customization of Products and services

Customers always find tailored products convenient for them. Deep customization creates delight for customers. Interaction with responsive pages creates a sense of happiness in customers.

8. Make Customers engaging by providing more Convenience

If the customers can order the product with one click or seek customer support services within seconds, they become very much loyal to your brand.

9. Treat Customers like a Family

Running a photo or video shoot contest imparts a positive impression on customers. Whether they win or not, they get a strong association with the brand.

10. Craft Handwritten messages to address Customers

A handwritten welcome, thanks, or greeting note demonstrates the real efforts dumped by the company for building Lifetime relationships with customers.

11.Show your Presence on Social Media

Responding by company representatives on social media diffuses the tension of customers. If customers are positively heard for their complaints, they start relying more on company.

12.Taking Continuous Feedback

Focused Group Discussion (FGD) with the customers and taking his detailed feedback on telephone creates value for the customers. They get delighted when they come to know their importance for the company.

13. Customers Involvement in Brand

Involving your customers positively in event prompts and behind the scene, live shootings inculcates good confidence and delight customers.

14. Invest in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Investing in Corporate Social Responsibility and publicizing your efforts let the customers know what you are giving back to the community.

Hearing and responding to other needs is called Customer Service while anticipation of customers’ needs is called Customer delight.

Professionally polite people are needed to interact with customers at all their touchpoints.

16. Focus on Addressing Dissatisfied Customers

A good marketer wins half of the battle if he diagnoses the cause of the customer’s problem.

Successful firms focus their efforts on satisfying customer needs that win the dissatisfied customers. Continuous connection with the customers to eliminate their problems before they make a call to customer service eliminates dissatisfaction among them.

17. Own your Shortcomings

Making a mistake in delivering after-sale service is inevitable. No one can claim to be perfect but Allah(SWT). Never feel hesitation to own errors. Customers will start giving you more respect when you own and remove mistakes.

18. Prove Your Interaction at every Touchpoint

If a customer is given protocol at all the TouchPoints, he feels that he is not anonymous to the customer service department of the company. Sensible use of advanced personalization tools creates delights for customers.

19. Give due Importance to your Employees’ Feedback

Your front desk employees know your customers more than anyone else. They have a close insight into customers’ choices. So, taking feedback from employees and including it in the company’s process can create value.

20. Answer the queries like an expert

Customers purchasing from you take you as the authority on product usage. Using the most updated and authorized information to your customers in form of text, blog, booklet or demo creates value for customers.

21. Answer in real-time

Providing a timely response to customers without delay converts them into real-time customers. Live chat with customers and engagement tools imparts on them a good impression and delights the customers as well.

22. Empowering Your Team Members

Boosting and uplifting your team always produces good results. Employees recognizing their justified role becomes confident. They work hard to create value for customers.

23. Be ready with Practical Solutions

A good marketer is always ready to cope with uncertain challenges arising suddenly. A customer always looks towards you for the solution. So, you should be ready to give an easy and practical solution for customers’ problems.

24. Prioritize Customer instead of Sales

Don’t let the customer feel that he is another dollar for you. Try to win his trust by creating value. If you’re able to find space in the customer’s mind, he will ultimately give you a space in his pocket.

25. Amaze Your Customers

Counseling customers about their real-life problems is something that generates value for the customers. Always provide customers more than their expectations.  You have amazed your customer If he attaches cognition, sensations warm feelings, and cognitions to your brand. Brand and Customer experiences are the key to success for your business.

26. Adopt Result Oriented Approach

Nothing can satisfy the customers more than favorable results. Most of the customers try to gauge Return On Investment (ROI). If they index you at the top, they become loyal to your brand.

27. Address a Pain Point Quickly

An aggrieved customer is always inclined to be heard on a priority basis. He expects a lot from your company. So try your hard to diagnose the root cause of his problem and sort out a solution on a priority basis. It will delight customers.

FAQs on How to Delight Customers

Wrapping Up:

Keeping customers satisfied in today’s competitive market is an open secret for building brand loyalty and increasing the customers base. Enhancing support services and solving the problems within real-time delights your customers.

 

Video Credits: Andrew Davis