People often ask : ” What exactly is customer delight? What is the essence of it?”
In its simplest form it is “Putting a smile on your customer’s face. “
Customer delight is defined as “surprising a customer by exceeding his or her expectations and thus creating a positive emotional reaction.” The interaction is the greatest source of opportunities to create delight as it can be personalized and tailored to the specific needs and wishes of the customer. During contacts with touch points in the company, more than just customer service can be delivered. The person at the front line can surprise by showing a sincere personal interest in the customer, offer small attentions that might please or find a solution specific to particular needs. Those front-line employees are able to develop a relationship between the customer and the brand.
Creating remarkable customer experiences can be a great differentiator for many businesses. It creates a ‘connection’, makes customers feel valued, and gets them talking to other people.
What are the great examples that surprise a customer with a level of service that creates a remarkable customer service experience.?
- It produces a wow reaction!
- It appears spontaneous or unexpected!
- It’s the personal touch!
- It makes the customer feel valued!
- It’s genuine… and…
- It creates a ‘talking point’!
Each example highlights different ways it can be done…. by responding personally, by a little surprising personal touch and by planning an amazing experience…
One realises that the most surprising and delightful moments are usually the ones that are unplanned, not strategized ahead of time. Getting a free bottle of water in a hotel room isn’t a surprise and delight moment. Getting a hand-written welcome note with it is better. Getting a wine bottle opener because the hotel remembers you asked for one on your last visit – now that’s impressive! Small touches but they make a difference.
How do we, as an organization, treat our customers and how do they respond?
For our Cover Story, we asked our people across the Group to send in testimonials, feedback forms, infographics, giving us reactions of our customers, and you will see from the responses that customer delight and customer satisfaction are alive and well in the Thomas Cook India Group!
Below, in the other articles in this section, we give you our own examples from our various businesses across the world, of special moments between our customers and our company, and how our staff achieve that distinctive connection that creates client loyalty, and makes them return to us over and over again. The glowing tributes say it all!