Have you seen some video ads of a particular company surprising their customers with a bag of goodies when they least expect? You probably have because such videos have been doing rounds on the media and the internet. It’s a customer delight marketing strategy aimed at promoting customer loyalty.

Customer delight differs from customer satisfaction in a very crucial way.  While customer  satisfaction involves providing a satisfactory experience as per expectations, customer delight goes further by exceeding a customer’s expectation, going above and beyond.

Customer delight is a rather crafty strategy as it takes advantage of the emotional reaction we experience when we witness customer delight in action and makes us want to share what we’ve seen ,which a type of mouth is kind of marketing. Many businesses use the customer delight experiences in their marketing efforts as testimonials.

Clearly customer delight can do good things for a business especially with the increased revenue, greater brand loyalty and being uniquely different from the competitors. However there are some people who think this is a very risky strategy that can’t guarantee returns.

The sentiments are echoed by one of the most prominent people in customer relationship management (CRM) Paul Greenberg.  He says that customer delight is a risky affair that is bound to fail. He suggests that business should instead focus on consistently meeting their client’s needs.

Why it’s Risky

Customer delight involves an element of surprise which involves a business going beyond  a customer’s expectations. It may evoke a positive emotional reaction for that instance but it is not sustainable. Wondering why? Well when you surprise the customer the first time, the next time you have to come up with something more unexpected to delight the customer.   You don’t expect to keep surprising the customers with the same gifts over and over again; it ruins the element of surprise. It stops being a delight and becomes an expectation.

Better Alternative

Just as Paul Greenberg suggested, companies and brands should keep their customers engaged rather than delighted. A company can provide the customers services that are simple, utilitarian and convenient for them.  You can exceed the customers’ expectations once in a while but exercise moderation.

The time and resources that could have been used on delighting customers can be used to promote better engagement with existing customers. This means that companies should have programs and strategies as well as deploy technology that encourages more engagement.

Instead of creating an emotional reaction with a customer that doesn’t guarantee loyalty, companies can create new emotional connections with their customers by ensuring every interaction delights them.

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