Video: The Power of Surprise and Delight

How Awesome Customer Service Helps You Keep Your Customers and Attract New Ones

How do you go beyond simply winning a customer? How do you turn someone into a customer for life, who turns into a solid referral source for years to come? The answer lies in the concept of Surprise and Delight.

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Video Transcript

We’ve been talking a lot recently around the office about the concept of “Surprise and Delight.” How do we go above and beyond for our clients? How do we do little things that make them smile, or that make their lives easier? How do we catch them off-guard in a positive manner?

That’s what surprise and delight is all about.

Surprise and Delight (v): the act of turning customers into lifelong superfans by catching them off-guard (surprise) in a positive manner (delight).

That’s the definition of Surprise and Delight, from SocialRank. The act of turning customers into lifelong superfans by catching them off-guard in a positive manner.

Think about when it may have happened to you. The first time your favorite barista started remembering your name. Or, recently, our CEO, Brandon West, ordered a product online. The next day, he got an email with a video of his product being packaged for shipping, along with a video from the shop owner recorded that day thanking him for his purchase. Think about how just that little gesture really makes you smile, and makes you like that person or that business a whole lot more.

Surprises Matter

It’s not Surprise and Delight if it’s not a surprise.

Here’s why surprises matter: studies have used MRI’s to show that when the brain encounters a pleasurable event that’s unexpected, the brain’s pleasure center lights up. That’s the natural response that you want that customer or that client to associate with you.

Attract, Convert, Close, Delight

Before they’ve heard of you, your potential customer or client is a stranger. You don’t know them, and they don’t know you. The first step is to attract them. As a digital agency, to use that means turning them into visitors.

Once they’re visitors, you use your website and your content marketing and your email and your social media and whatever else to convert them into leads.

Once they’re leads, your marketing and maybe your sales team work to close them into customers.

That’s all great, you’ve won a customer. But it goes one step further. Once they’re your customer, you should work to delight them. Delighting them turns them into promoters, who go and tell their friends… other potential customers.

Surprise and Delight

That’s what Surprise and Delight means, and why it’s important. This week, as you’re writing your to-do list, getting ready to serve a customer, or working with a client, ask yourself: “What can I do to Surprise and Delight this person this week?”