Get that smile from the heart

The Global Knowledge Review - February 2005

Dina Mehta

I’ve been thinking of the concept of client or customer delight, and the old wise 80/20 rule that says businesses get 80% of their revenue from 20% of their clients, that a lot of companies seem to be forgetting while prospecting for new business, and servicing their customers. The environment in India is perhaps different, still it is changing so rapidly from a low-wage, unorganized work environment to increasing structures driven by large multinational organizations, which in turn have a rub-off on small entrepreneurs. My local vegetable vendor, my local grocer, my local Indian take-away food joint and my local beauty salon have taught me more about customer delight than from any 'corporate' service-driven organization. I wonder whether these experiences are true to India alone? Do you have similar stories in your culture? When have you been delighted? What does customer delight mean to you?

My vegetable vendor now has a cell phone and sources the freshest zucchini for me if I order it a day in advance and sends it to me early morning along with a bunch of fresh parsley that he feels I might have forgotten to order (he doesn’t know that the parsley is what I needed for those baby potatoes he sent me two weeks earlier, and not the zucchini!).
My local grocer, who when runs out of the brand of detergent I want, sends his boy to the shop next door, purchases it from his competitor and sees that I have it with me in all of 5 minutes. The receptionist at my local salon who calls me on my birthday to wish me and offers me a special discount on their services, with a free head massage thrown in.

The owner of my favourite Indian take-away, who after having sent me food really late, calls me up the next day to apologize. I feel good. Twenty minutes later there is a knock on my door and I am handed a huge bouquet of flowers with an apology note from the owner. I can’t stop smiling about it, even now.

The staff at my local bank branch who allows me to withdraw money well after banking hours. And although I am not a ‘HNI’ (high net-worth individual), I get this beautiful paper lantern at Diwali from my favorite teller at the bank. I go around telling all my friends about this. With a big grin.

What strikes me about these people is they have mastered the art of client delight in small, simple, ways. In ways that are personal, social and responsive beyond the 'brief'. In ways that truly imbibe the spirit of improvisation, spontaneity and agility – which come from the heart. They are human, fallible and as a customer I learn to appreciate that. If on the odd day I need to, I'd rather do without, not scream my head off at their inefficiencies, and definitely not turn away from them.

Organizations often stress on customer delight but I’m afraid many of them miss out on the little things, the touch-feel, in their attempt to 'institutionalize' a client delight program. Putting you on hold for fifteen minutes, passing you from one person to another who make you repeat your problem each time, playing music while you are holding is no delight. All of us have unpleasant stories to share don’t we.

Credit card companies, large stores, cell phone providers, vehicle manufacturers, white goods manufacturers, banks and other service organizations try to outdo each other with gestures that are bigger. Invitations for special events, giving you a shop assistant because you are a high value customer, reward points for privileged customers, loyalty cards. Interestingly, all these are linked to the business that you generate for them. Perhaps manifestations of the 80/20 rule. Keeping the 20% satisfied. This manifestation is based on money and economics, on rationality rather than from the heart and love for the business.

While such programs deliver on expectations, customers today 'expect' far more from them. Service organizations try and out-do each other vying to send the most innovative New Year card - this year with a bottle of champagne attached, for instance. Copycat marketing programs with high budgets do the same. Does that delight you? Unfortunately, these gestures though bigger, aren’t always better. If you are a high value customer, more often than not, you are the 20% for a whole host of service providers. These gestures have become hygiene factors, offered to all in that group, they aren’t impromptu, they’ve lost their element of surprise, and aren’t unexpected anymore. Cynical customers see through these and don’t want to pay to sustain them. And sometimes, they’d rather not see the plastic smile.

We see the mushrooming of several small boutique service organizations. The genesis is in individuals breaking away from larger groups and starting their own boutiques. They can do this because they carry clients with them. Is it simply because of their skills? What is it? The promise is always the same - more expertise, lower overheads, talk to me without the layers. De-layering requires empowerment. In large service businesses, this is always more difficult as the labor is often low cost low wage, and there is high turnover. Still it is that ‘X’ factor that makes for delight, and binds the client to the provider.

Drawing a difference between customer satisfaction and delight, these actions and gestures might bring the company high scores on customer satisfaction. Take the case of any large five star hotel chain – you are satisfied when you get the fruit basket in your room, you love the chocolate left on your bed, you smile back at the staff when they greet you with smiles. However, service with a smile is now so over-baked at least in this part of the world. Its what’s expected from any hotel today. And everyone does it.

Does it bring about delight? Gain loyalty? Shouldn’t we be working towards a new interpretation of delight that builds loyalty, which works from within, which tugs at the heart and not the mind. Each customer has a mental model about what to expect from a service provider based on his or her experiences and delight can come from a really simple deviation from the expectations around the experience. For instance, when you are accustomed to being greeted by a frowning stewardess on your flight, a simple greeting without a frown can actually redefine your experience and hence your expectations in the future.

Delight to me is joy, it is heartfelt, it is love, it is a high. Its that little extra that makes you smile with the knowledge that you have made the right choice, a little reminder every so often that makes for stickiness. Something that conveys to you that you are special to us - and not just another client that will get the annual New Year card or be on our mailing list. Something that in a very personalized way, differentiates you from other clients or in the least, leaves you with that perception.

More subtly, delight makes you my brand ambassador, by telling stories and infecting others with your experiences. And mind you, without any monetary incentive. These stories are the commitment, they are the reward from the exchange, they bring a smile from the heart.

Delight is about flow, it’s a customer virus that stems from stories and experiences. The contrast is the bad experience; we all know they are told many more times. Are you setting up your customer satisfaction and delight programme as an insurance policy or is the thrust on creating growth?

Delight is also about networking these experiences, about employees getting to hear them back, a feedback loop. This is the stimulus, it is the training ground. It is what makes the entrepreneur so effective. How can you make them easy to emulate and how transfer good stories - what are the strategies, what is the sharing approach?

Let me share a little experience with some Americans for whom I was conducting ethnographies in rural areas. They visited India and we took them to all our sites, made them interact with the people there and had several rounds of brainstorming with them. I know the delight for them was not so much in any of these – it was when I took them on an impromptu learning journey to a village on an unexpectedly free morning and we sat under the trees and talked to villagers, and went on a round with the mailman who was delivering letters. Which prompted them to write this to me:

“A quick note to say how much I have enjoyed working with you over the past week. There are a million questions that I have that will take considerable time to think through. I'd love to find time to talk. ……… Again, thanks for the great time. I will long remember sitting under the trees talking with the school teachers!”

So how can you start writing new chapters in customer delight for your business? How will you? Perhaps with stories and some use research. The focus must be on the element of surprise, on the speed of dissemination, on honesty and trust when things go wrong. People do understand that a business can apologize, and more importantly when trying new things.

There are no structured manuals on this, there cannot be if we want to retain the thrill of surprise. No one ever wrote the manual for my vegetable vendor or my local grocer. It isn’t difficult to keep a watchful eye on people, look at people and their responses. Small gestures, silent gestures, spontaneous that bring joy. The best lessons come from walking into other environments, trying things out and interrogating what happened. In research you do ethnographies, however a company or entrepreneur does not have to do this. Look for delights in day-to-day experiences, by recognizing a twinkle in someone else’s eye, acknowledging that light step. Then by working out how they were evoked, and applying it to what you do. Recognizing that consumer delight is a moving target, that this delight can become a powerful differentiator for your product, brand or service. That in making these gestures you will go a long way in building and strengthening customer loyalty, and hence positively impact your brand or service.

This will empower you and your customer. And really bring that smile from the heart.

What is Knowledge Management? - John Edwards

Mini-clip interview for Gurteen Knowledge with Professor John Edwards . What is Knowledge Management? Shot at ECKM 2006 in Budapest in September 2006.

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Wednesday 15 October 2008
08:33 PM GDT