Terry Vavra's Blog

Wishing You a Delightful Holiday!

Posted on 24. Dec, 2011 by tvavra in Customer Recognition, Customer Relationships, Managing Experiences

One discovery Tim Keiningham and I made a number of years ago, is that simply satisfying a customer isn’t enough to get that customer to become a truly loyal customer.  We based this finding on lots of observations and on several documented trials.  This is a unique perspective and isn’t fully understood throughout the customer satisfaction community.  We found that to truly “bond” customers to a business, the business had to perform at extremely high levels, far surpassing mere satisfaction.  Our learnings became the basis for our Customer Delight Principle and our book by the same name.  Even before our book was published, we had conducted business at my company, Marketing Metrics, with this guideline: delight the client and they’ll not only come back, but they’ll tell others as well.

With the celebration of Christmas and Hanukkah, we all become a bit more sensitive to how we’re treating others and how we’re being treated in return.   This awareness is usually generalized to our customers as well.  We become more conscious of treating customers fairly and providing them a quality product and/or superb service.  In short, either consciously or unconsciously we may goal to delight our customers – in the spirit of the season.  This awareness also serves as a good reminder of how we ought to be conducting business the remaining 51 weeks of the year!

I hope this heightened sensitivity to goodwill transcends the Holiday season and becomes an accepted component of your organization’s mission statement.  And so I wish each of you not just a satisfying or a Merry Christmas, but a truly Delightful holiday; one, that because of your delight, you’ll remember for many years to come.

Tags: Customer Delight, Delight Analysis