Ensuring Customer Delight

Dhyaan
Member
Picture of Dhyaan

Posted 17-Mar-2005 11:17 PM
Dear Graham,

I was reading an article (http://www.ecustomerserviceworld.com/earticlesstore_articles.asp?type=article&id=1414) wherein the writer has mentioned " Prajakt Raut reminds us that a delighted customer has the potential to show more loyalty to your brand than a satisfied customer. ". Is it not possible that a satisfied customer is actually the most loyal of all customers as a delighted customer is more like a casanova flirting with the company. As soon as the " delight " period / factor is over the customer automatically jumps ship to something else that catches his fancy. Infact, if I pay equal attention if not more to the satisfied customer, would I not ensure higher loyalty than from a delighted customer ??? All CRM consultants seem to be crying themselves hoarse about customer delight. Should it not be a partner to customer satisfaction ?

Graham Hill
Guru
Member

Posted 21-Mar-2005 11:38 PM
Dhyaan

Thank you for your interesting question. There is a lot of confusion around the area of satisfaction, delight, retention, loyalty and the like.

Let me explain and in doing so, attempt to answer your question.

Most satisfaction models look at a variety of attributes that the customer uses to make their assessment of a company and its products. For example, the widely used JD Power automobile satisfaction survey looks at a broad range of attributes within the Vehicle Quality & Reliability, Vehicle Appeal, Dealer Service Satisfaction and Cost of Ownership categories. The customer's expectation of how much of each attribute will be delivered lies within a minimum acceptable—maximum expected range. Providing the customer's assessment of the attributes as experienced lie within this range, they will be 'satisfied'. Satisfaction could thus be described as a psychological state triggered when a customer receives what he expects to receive.

Delight occurs when the customer receives more than he expects AND it is a suprise. For example, the first time a car dealer washes & cleans a customer's car after a service will probably cause 'delight', because the customer doesn't expect it and it is a positive suprise. The second time it occurs, the customer may also be delighted, although it will be less of a suprise than the first time. The third time, the customer may well expect the car to be washed & cleaned and they will probably only be 'totally satisfied' rather than delighted. This is the state that Prajakt Raut most closely describes in his article. If on the fourth visit, the dealer doesn't wash & clean the car, the customer will now expect it to have been done and may well be disastisfied! This is the problem with 'delight strategies'; they tend to raise expectations and make it harder to really delight customers in the future. They also raise costs.

To respond to your question, it is likely that a totally satisfied customer will be easier to retain as a customer than a less satisfied one. But research suggests that retention only occurs when the customer really is totally satisfied. Suprising over-delivery resulting in delight provides a satisfaction boost, but usually only temporarily. I don't think it likely that a delighted customer will be more likely to defect, unless their expectations are permanently raised and the company stops delivering.

There is some research that suggests that satisfaction is a good indicator of customer retention in customers who do not really identify themselves particular strongly with a company and its products. The same research suggests that 'commitment' is a better predictor of retention for customers who do identify themselves strongly with a company and its products. Two market researchers, Butch Rice & Jan Hofmeier, have developed a useful'Conversion Model' based upon these differences. It is widely used to identify which customers are likely to switch to and from a brand (see http://www.conversionmodel.com/ for more details).

So there you have it. Satisfaction is probably a good indicator of a typical customer's retention by a company. Delight provides a temporary boost to retention but can come unstuck if it becomes a standard part of the customer's expectations. Commitment is probably a better indicator of retention for customers who identify themsleves with a company.

Hope that helps. This is a very complex area.

Graham Hill
Independent CRM Consultant

Posted 23-Mar-2005 05:07 AM
Dear Graham,

Thank you for answering my query. Not enlightened yet but definitely awakened. I do believe customer satisfaction and delight is still a grey area and getting that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is what CRM is all about. Thank you once again.

Warm Regards

Dhyaan

Vishal Sarkar
Member Council
Member

Posted 29-Mar-2005 12:11 PM
Dhyaan,

Here is something that you may want to consider, concerned to Customer Delight.

Customer delight can be a part of your overall customer strategy, not the startegy itself. Many organizations strategically identify the customer segments that they need to 'rejuvenate' from time to time and then 'plant' customer delight methods for those segments. These are not in exception to customer satisfaction, which is the underlying purpose of the customer strategy. You need to first work to towards customer satisfaction and use 'delight' tools once in a while. A word of caution—overuse of 'delight' instances can also run you into a situation of 'spoiling' your customer.

Retention is also a complex subject and it is not as easy as saying that a delighted customer or even a satisfied customer will not defect. There are more factors like the level of satisfaction, expectation change, value proposition, etc that affect retention.

I think that if companies would focus on the changing customer needs and strive for customer 'satisfaction', retention could be easier, keeping all other environmental variables constant. Of course, 'delight' does help once in a while to recharge relationships.

Best,

Vishal Sarkar

CRM Principal
Ascentium Corporation
www.ascentium.com

President
CRM Association of Northwest
www.crma-northwest.org

Graham Hill
Guru
Member

Posted 30-Mar-2005 12:00 AM
Vishal

You raise an interesting question: How much can moments of delight be planned versus be a response to a real situation?

Clearly, it is possible to plan some moments of delight into an ongoing 'relationship' with a customer. But to do so properly, they have to be meaningful, they have to match the customer's current situation, they have to be positive and they do have to be a genuine suprise.

The trouble with much of the 'planned delight' that I have seen is that it isn't meaningful, it doesn't match the customer's current situation and it isn't particularly positive! Sending a customer a 'thank you' gift is nice, but does it really trigger delight? I am not so sure.

Before a company starts out on a planned delight programme, I would strongly recommend that they REALLY understand what their customers want, need and expect. Most companies just provide more or less what their competitors provide and only pay lip service to customer-orientation.

Once you understand what customers really need and how that differs for different groups of customers and in different situations, then you can start to plan an element of delight. Even here, most of the delight should be in going the extra mile for the customer, not in giving them gifts. And a lot of going the extra mile can only be delivered by empowering front-line staff to make on the spot decisions about delighting customers.

By all means plan delight for customers, but do it from the right starting points—the customer, their needs and their situation.

Graham Hill
Independent CRM Consultant

Vishal Sarkar
Member Council
Member

Posted 30-Mar-2005 02:32 PM
Graham,

Thanks for bringing this up.

Rather than 'planning' delight, what is required is to allow (plant) mechanisms within the process structure for delivering delight as and when required. Yes, delight is very situational and one way cannot fit all situations. What I meant was to have methods wherein the front facing people can go that extra mile to deliver delight without being bound by stringent processes that at time inhibit great service. In smaller setups, this may not be required because the decision maker may also be the front end service person. However, in larger organizations, I have noticed, that the customer facing persons don't go that 'extra mile' to deliver a surprise element to the customer, because they have no leeway in their processes to do so.

For example, in a hotel chain I worked with, depending on the customer segment, the front facing staff was given a lot of leeway in the way they think it would be best to satisfy a customer in a particular situation. For a particular segment, we also came up with ways to surprise customers with some innovative service from time to time. This was not necessarily penned down as a free gift after 'x' visits, but more so a variety of things that the front facing staff could do (which were beyond the normal offerings) to delight customers. How and what fit best was left up to their discretion, depending upon the situation. The challenge we faced was not to overdo these instances, so that they became part of the expectation from the customer. This was regulated by changing the innovative service offerings from time to time augmented with a lot of staff training.

Yes, delight does not necessarily mean giving away free gifts, but I would relate to it more towards a highly positive customer experience that results from exceeding the customer expectation at a particular time. If it can have a positive emotional impact on the customer, then that tends to be quite powerful and can be a bonding factor in the entire relationship.

Best,

Vishal Sarkar

CRM Principal
Ascentium Corporation
www.ascentium.com

President
CRM Association of Northwest
www.crma-northwest.org

Graham Hill
Guru
Member

Posted 31-Mar-2005 11:04 PM
Vishal
I fully agree with everything you suggest.

As I see it, at the heart of delight are the hearts that beat in your customer-facing staff. They work best when they have a flexible framework to guide how they should treat all customers well and some customers a bit better, not a straight jacket.

So much service today is bland and impersonal. And so many well-meant attempts to delight come across as plastic and impersonal. That customer-facing staff and customers are 'people' seems often to be forgotten during the 'customer experience reengineering' that is all the rage at the moment.

Perhaps part of the difficulty is that creating delight requires Theory Y handling of staff and customers, whereas most customer experiences are developed by Theory X managers and ultra-Theory X consultants.

Perhaps thats one of the reasons why service quality and its related customer satisfaction are gradually deteriorating in most categories in the US Customer Satisfaction Ratings published annually by the Uni Michigan.

Food for thought: How can we develop 'real' experiences where motivated, helpful staff feel able to delight their customers.

Graham Hill
Independent Management Consultant

Vishal Sarkar
Member Council
Member

Posted 05-Apr-2005 01:45 PM
Graham,

Great insight on this issue.

As I see it, service is not all about processes, it is about the attitude. In most cases, 'consultants' focus too much on the service delivery processes and forget the service delivery enablers—the line staff.

Developing 'real' experiences in customer service gets me thinking about empathy towards the customer. This is a virtue that needs understanding and development to deliver real experiences. At the end of the day if you have a good process but the line staff dealing with the customer is 'cold', the experience will not be good. Most companies talk about 'putting oneself in the customers' shoes', but few really follow this. By putting oneself in the customers' shoes also includes understanding the pain areas for the customer, trying to understand the needs vs. the wants, studying the situational influences, etc. It is more complex than just stereotyping and using scripts to hold dialog with customers. It requires the empathy of the service provider towards the customer.

Empathy can be developed by training, focusing on the customer and the provider as humans and dealing with the emotional part of the engagement. This is one area that requires more time because we are now talking about people development.

I feel that service levels are plummeting in many categories, because the service providers are focusing more on getting the process right (using IVRs, scripts, etc), and in turn they forget about training the staff using these tools.

Vishal Sarkar

CRM Principal
Ascentium Corporation
www.ascentium.com

President
CRM Association of Northwest
www.crma-northwest.org