What is customer delight?
To cover the needs of the customers is to make sure that they are satisfied. To exceed their expectations is to ensure that they are delighted.
Most often, enchantment is the result of chance in a company. It is based on the personality of an employee who will surprise the customer by exceeding his or her expectations: providing a service that goes beyond what he or she is supposed to do, creating a high-quality relationship, having an attention, special gestures such as offering a gift...
It is in these situations, experienced as exceptional, that the relationship goes beyond the transactional register and activates the emotional register.
Enchantment should not happen by chance, but should be created in a well thought-out, systematic and reliable way . This means that the activitiesin the company that will bring delight and generate profits must be identified.
Emotion as a positive marker of customer experience
As the 'Wow' effect explicitly describes, positive emotional branding allows a customer to remember their experience for a long time, and thus prolong their loyalty. So pay attention - in particular - to the first and last impressions left in the customer journey.
Enchantment as a prescription lever
Customers are increasingly attentive to feedback from their peers, and have made it a reflex in their choice process to study the opinions and comments of other customers on social networks, forums and comparison sites. And because a satisfied customer does not share his feedback as easily as a dissatisfied one, one of the challenges is to make his customers "very satisfied" and therefore prescribers, so that the recommendation and the positive buzz are there.
Is enchantment profitable?
Surprising customers by exceeding their expectations is much more expensive for the company than simply meeting their basic expectations. This often requires greater availability of staff, for longer and more personalised exchanges. But it is interesting to evaluate the cost of enchantment not only in terms of loyalty gains but also in terms of recommendation rates and positive word-of-mouth generated. Customers advertise for free to prospects, that's a lot of effort saved!
Enchantment as the last stage of the Satisfaction rocket
Beware, however: you can only enchant the customer when you are already satisfying him or her with regard to his or her basic needs, which the customer (rightly) takes for granted. Customer satisfaction is a prerequisite for enchantment. So there is no point in focusing your energy on delight if the basic needs are not covered!
In summary, a company that is serious about improving the customer experience will focus on meeting the needs of its customers to the point of exceeding their expectations in order to create a positive emotional impression. This will make it much easier to retain and acquire customers, and the development of its business will be less dependent on the effectiveness of its "hard" prospecting actions.
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