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TimothyAt Sapience, we breathe and live by a singular mantra: Customer Delight. It's not only the most important KPI for us, it's the beating heart of everything we do. After each research project, we don't settle for mere satisfaction; we aim for the stars, striving for a 9 or 10 out of 10 - a score that clearly indicates delight. Today, we proudly stand with an outstanding average score of 9.2!
What is customer delight and why is it so important?
Customer delight goes beyond customer satisfaction. We don’t just want to meet the expectations of our clients. We want to clearly exceed those expectations by overdelivering.
Why is customer delight so important? As Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart proclaimed: “There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” His obsession with customers took him to visit multiple Walmart stores daily, listening, learning, and understanding their needs. And this obsession propelled Walmart to become the world's largest retailer.
Advantages of customer delight
The advantages of aiming for customer delight instead of customer satisfaction are clear:
- Your clients will be more loyal, they will repurchase by not only returning but by spending more.
- They might even become brand advocates, advertising you to other potential clients.
- Delight also creates an emotional connection, which can be long-lasting and protect you against negative reactions to possible human errors in the future. Or as Warren Buffett puts it: “Don’t just satisfy your customers - delight them… Anybody who has happy customers is likely to have a pretty good future.”
How to create customer delight?
There are many ways to create customer delight. Anything that goes way beyond the expectations of your customers can help. At Sapience, our commitment to delight begins at the project's inception, from proposal to presentation. We deliver the proposal before the deadline and after thinking along and calling the client to understand exactly what they want to get out of the project. We answer client questions literally within hours. We proactively give updates of the project progress, etc.
One of my favorite examples of creating crazy customer delight is the famous tire story of Nordstrom, that was a shoe store in Seattle at the time. Nordstrom has an insane return policy: you can return what you bought virtually unconditionally, no‐questions‐asked and you will get your money back. In one instance they even refunded a car tire although they have never sold tires. The client who appeared in front of the sales clerk had bought the tire at that same location, which was an automotive parts store before Nordstrom bought the location to open a shoe store. Famously the client was refunded for the tire. “We took the tire and nailed it up in the stockroom as an example of how you give customer service. We didn’t realize the story would become a wonderful cultural pillar of the company,” John Nordstrom recalls.
Conclusion
To us it is no surprise that some of the most successful companies are those who are also obsessed about creating an amazing customer experience, like Apple, Costco, Amazon, Disney or Starbucks.
Are you already customer obsessed? Want to find out how to overdeliver on your customers’ expectations? Contact us via the button below and we will send you a PDF with concrete tips on how to delight your customers.