Think about it: Why should doing a good job and meeting your customers' expectations be a surprise? If you're not meeting their expectations, what hope do you have of keeping them as customers and being able to rely on them for good word of mouth?
And we all know the adage about how a happy customer will tell one person and an unhappy person will tell ten. You're probably thinking, "Oh, but nice surprises make customers feel good. The onus for delivering surprise falls on an individual employee; the responsibility for delivering delight should fall on the company. Your foundation for delight should be those things you can do repeatably, reliably, scalably, and profitably.
Case in point: The experience Patricia had recently with an airline. In sharp contrast to recent stories about air travel, an airline, unprompted, did an ostensibly nice thing for her. This was before the United fiasco, the multi-day Delta delay, and American's Strollergate. We mention this so you don't think the airline in question or its employee were motivated by any recent bad press. It was a business trip, so she felt pretty confident that her plans wouldn't change.
So, I did some digging amongst resources both in and out of the promo industry. Surprise and Delight marketing can also foster brand awareness by providing things that customers want to tell friends, colleagues and other connections about - making the customer feel valued and prompting them to share often on social media.
An oft-overlooked element is applying the same approach to your own company employees. When you Surprise and Delight your employees, they are likely to be more enthusiastic brand advocates. It might take the form of a handwritten thank-you note to a long-time loyal customer. Or, on the other side of the coin, it could be quick phone call to reconnect with a contact that has been out touch. The key is to develop an idea and delivery that stands out.
Some of the best moments are provided to a recipient who is not expecting anything… a gift without strings attached! My five-minute wallet audit led to me finding a new home for six loyalty cards — the bin.
About half of all the cards in my now semi-functional wallet were unused loyalty cards I had picked up from coffee shops, burrito bars and retailers. Judging by how many businesses produce these cards, they must work, right? Loyalty schemes are nothing new, but they can work.
These types of schemes intend to delight, but their prevalence has reduced the capacity to do so. This applies to online loyalty schemes too.
Popularity and prevalence means these tactics no longer please customers like they used to. Buyers have access to millions of sellers online offering even more products.
How do you generate repeat business in such a hyper-competitive environment? How do you make your online sales business stand out from the crowd? What strategy can you follow to surprise and delight your customers? Research by Gartner Group shows that successfully retaining customers is a key driver of profit. If implemented carefully and effectively, surprise and delight can create a cycle of happiness for your business.
For the generation that relies on social proof before purchasing products and using websites, successful word-of-mouth marketing is gold. If your experiences with customers are impactful enough that they share them with others, one act of kindness could become amplified to thousands of new potential customers. In short, keep your current customers happy, incentivize them to spend more, and delight them enough that they will tell their friends, thus creating more business and exposure for you.
The eCommerce giants like Amazon have standardized and raised the bar on many previous competitive differentiators like product quality, delivery times and packaging, to name a few. The online customer is spoilt for choice, and for experience. Customer support queries are home to the most irate, dissatisfied, confused, inquisitive and interested segment of your audience.
Delighting a customer takes a lot of thought and effort. But when you sense an opportunity to surprise and delight, you should take it. The strategy tends to be used at point-of-sale or in post-sales communications.
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