Remember the painstaking efforts your parents took to hide birthday and Christmas presents from you as a child? That’s because they understood the power of surprise and how it could lead to delight when Christmas morning rolled around. They also knew that spoiling the surprise could ruin the entire holiday experience.
Your customers aren’t much different from a bright-eyed kid waiting for Santa to come. They want excitement and pleasure from their shopping experiences. If they don’t get those things, they’re likely to become bored and disenchanted. Providing unexpected experiences that astonish your customers in wonderful ways is one key to unlocking customer loyalty. Here are a few things to know about the power of surprise and delight in your customer retention efforts.
Essential Elements of Surprise and Delight
Your surprise-and-delight strategy should contain the following elements: personalization, unexpected “extra” gestures, and engagement. You can personalize customer experiences by creating tailored experiences based on customer purchase history, behaviors, and preferences. A customer relationship management system can help you gather and analyze data so you know exactly what your customers like. CRM solutions make it easier to surprise customers with exceptional, customized interactions time after time.
Unexpected gestures offer a welcome break from mundane consumer experiences. They can include unforeseen rewards, exclusive discounts, or appreciation gifts. For example, you might surprise shoppers with special post-purchase discounts. This is a great way to reward them for their loyalty while also encouraging them to continue shopping with you.
Finally, encourage customer engagement by welcoming user-generated reviews and content on your social media platforms. This will help you build an enthusiastic following by fostering a sense of community and belonging around your brand. Many businesses also encourage consumer engagement and interaction through subscription models. These models can seem exclusive and make clients feel privileged to be part of something special.
Examples of Surprise-and-Delight Tactics You Can Use
A surprise-and-delight strategy can potentially backfire if you don’t know how to properly develop and implement it. Hiring an employee to jump out of a bush and terrify passersby will certainly surprise people, but it won’t delight them. Surprise doesn’t always evoke pleasant emotions, and it can be very off-putting if it’s not done thoughtfully.
You need to make sure you’re creating a positive experience for your customers by surprising them in the right ways. Here are some examples of effective surprise-and-delight tactics you can employ:
- Join customers in celebrating a milestone such as a birthday, wedding, or anniversary by offering a special gift, such as a gift card, chocolates, or flowers.
- Send a handwritten thank-you note to customers after they make a purchase to establish an emotional connection to your brand.
- Offer personalized assistance to show customers how to make best use of your offerings and show them you care about their success.
- Go the extra mile to resolve customer complaints by offering free shipping or a discount for their troubles.
- Host a client appreciation event to let your loyal audience know how much you value their business.
- Offer free samples so customers can try out new products before making a commitment to buy them.
- Look for opportunities to do special things for people and post your interactions on social media to drive consumer engagement.
Pet food retailer Chewy provides an excellent example of what surprise and delight looks like in the real world. A customer contacted the company after the death of their dog and asked if they could return their unopened dog food. Chewy responded by offering a full refund without requiring the customer to return the product. They also went the extra mile to deliver flowers and a signed gift note to the distressed customer. The grateful recipient then shared their experience on social media and will likely be a loyal Chewy customer for life.
Potential Outcomes of a Successful Surprise-and-Delight Strategy
The way your brand interacts with consumers is critical to their continued loyalty. Most business owners are aware of this fact. That’s why they expend so much time, money, and effort training their customer service departments. Your customer service agents are most likely the first line of contact consumers have with your company. Therefore, they have a unique opportunity to shape customer opinions of your brand by providing more than ordinarily good service.
But is surprising your customers really that important, or is it just an unnecessary gimmick that takes up valuable resources? The answer depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. If you want to decrease consumer turnover and build loyalty, you’d better plan on providing surprisingly wonderful customer experiences. Doing so will give your customers a reason to prefer you over your competitors.
Surprise has the power to drive behavior and fuel consumer passion for your brand. The more passionate your customers are about your brand, the more likely they are to continue choosing it. More importantly, they’ll also enthusiastically recommend it to their friends and family members. You can even potentially win back inactive customers by creating delightfully unexpected customer experiences.
It may seem like an unnecessary extra step in your marketing strategy, but stunning your customers — pleasantly — is worth the effort. With so many competitors trying to win over the same audience, you need to stand out somehow. By using proven surprise-and-delight strategies, you can foster lasting consumer excitement for your brand.
