Marketing

Why is it Important for Marketers to ‘Delight’ their Customers?

Introduction

Marketers have realized that striving for customer’s satisfaction is not all that matters for a mega sale. More efforts should be directed towards achieving loyalty for the main products or services of the business through “customers delight”. Customer delight is normally achieved through a combination of ecstasy and surprises to ensure customer’s full satisfaction on the product or service to a point of pledging his or her loyalty.

Marketers should focus more on customer delight because most customers develop perceptions on performance of various products and services through the satisfaction they derive from them. Customer’s fulfillment through delight impacts customers’ enthusiasm to remain loyal to the firm hence impacts the firm’s sales and profits. Delighting the customers is also important for achieving total quality management because the firm will ensure that customers have a good perception of the products or services they receive. This will prompt for excellence in the process of creating the product and marketing strategies. This view has been supported by the works of Seth & Seth (2005).

The ability of an organization to delight its customer not only reflects the intention of the organization to do enough but also to go past customer satisfaction. Delighting customers comes along with an extra cost because the customers elevate their anticipation making it more difficult for the firm to satisfy them in the next sale and this can be detrimental to the future profits of the firm. However, the firms that do not delight their customers receive a worse punch when the customers become loyal to their delighting firms thus failing to delight, proves to be more injurious than delighting (Mycustomer.com, 2008).

Delighting customers drives a business to succeed because it creates confidence in the customers who are the lifeblood of the business. It always does more than a successful transaction and gives the customers memorable thoughts about the purchase. Retaining customers is only possible through pleasing them with a surprising satisfaction level because their emotions and perceptions on performance of products ranges from moderately satisfied to reasonably dissatisfy. When customers are delighted about a product or service, they will be reliable to do repeat purchases and also tell others.

Keiningham, & Vavra (2001), stated that the process of delighting positively disconfirms customer’s expectations creating a positive perception of the product or service leading to loyalty. Delighting upholds the emotional needs, security and self-esteem of the customer, making them socially attached to the product or service. Customers are normally insecure about physical and economic harm and in most cases, they least expect entrepreneurs to address such problems through the product and services they offer. Delighting seeks to satisfy even the hidden needs of the customer such as being treated with respect and trust in their transactions.

Marketers who delight their customers gain more confidence in their product as it fully satisfies the needs of their customers. It is imperative for customers to create good relationships with customers through handling them first as important people then as customers. This will create customer loyalty and provide security for both the client and the firm for mutual thriving even in hard economic times.

Conclusion

Delighting is done through expressing the positive inter-personal factors like friendliness, respect, politeness and taking keen interest in the customer’s problems and even going an extra mile to solve them. Customers who are treated in this manner a more likely to do repeat purchases and this will lead to a mega sales for the firm in the long-run.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

Mycustomer.com, 2008, Who are tomorrow’s customers and how will I serve them? Retrieved from http://www.mycustomer.com/item/133790  [Accessed 29 September 2010]

KEININGHAM, T. L., & VAVRA, T. G. 2001. The customer delight principle: exceeding customers’ expectations for bottom-line success. Chicago, McGraw Hill.

SETH, R., & SETH, K. 2005. Creating customer delight: the how and why of CRM. New Delhi; Thousand Oaks, Calif, Response Books