There’s a lot of talk about ‘customer delight’ but I find few deliver on it. Perhaps you’ve read or heard the phrase used at a conference or on a blog recently – it’s the idea that we shouldn’t just satisfy customers, we should delight them – particularly pertinent because customer satisfaction isn’t hard to come by these days what with everything we want within a few clicks or a stroll through our local city centre.
Unfortunately, this idea of delighting people is a mystery to most, painted as a very soft and intangible concept that is hard to gauge and even harder to create. I’ve certainly heard the phrase ‘customer delight’ used a lot over the past 18 months, but I’m yet to hear anyone tell us how we do.
Well, except for the guys at 1000heads.
How 1000heads do it
When James Whatley posted this beautiful info graphic on “#WhatIsWom” over the summer, I chomped at the bit to get my hands on one for myself. Sure enough, as promised, it came:
There’s two lessons here that I’ve learnt from James and Molly Flatt and the other guys at 1000heads. The first is the fact that they delivered on the promise in the first place. I’m writing this post right now because James made good on a promise to send me my very own #WhatIsWom poster. You can’t underestimate the power of doing what you say you’ll do.
The second thing that they taught me is to disrupt expectations. I didn’t just get the poster as I was expecting, I got a beautiful hand written note to me, which now sits proudly next to my poster over looking my desk as a fond reminder to go the extra mile.
Now Do It Yourself
I wrote a while back on expectation management, in which I presented a framework that helps you go from what we call ‘customer sacrifice‘ (where the customer doesn’t get what they expect), then ‘customer satisfaction‘ (where the customer gets what they expect), through to ‘customer surprise‘ (where the customer gets more than they expect), and even through to ‘customer suspense‘ (where the customer can’t wait to see what they get next.)
To get a beautiful diagram and framework to help you do this, check out The Basics of Expectation Management. But don’t forget the core two points above: do what you say you’ll do, and then go the extra mile.
And I’d say that to do those two, you have to ultimately and passionately care about people. That’s what 1000heads do.
Your Leading Thoughts
- What is going the extra mile for you and what you’re doing right now? If you run a business, how can you exceed expectations (and profitably). If you run a church, how you can deliver more value to the congregation than they expect? If you’re blogging away, how can your blog go the extra mile?
- I boil this down to passionately caring for people. When you passionately care, you do your best to value and bless people. Do you see the same correlation in passion care = go the extra mile?
We all know that Apple’s marketing and buzz machine is one of the best in the world. So when the 
So first, to refresh your memory and provide a frame of reference, here’s the diagram from yesterday. When it comes to managing expectations, we can do it on all these levels, as we went through. If you under promise and over deliver, you will give customer surprise. It’s a hack job, but you’ll do it. What we need, though, is something more than this, and something which has more sustainability and long term strategy – and we find it is in customer suspense where expectation management really flourishes. 
