We worked with renowned CX author John Goodman, the Vice Chairman of Customer Care Measurement & Consulting (CCMC) on a first-of-its-kind scientific, large-scale study on Customer Delight. The study examined the value of creating delight and what causes customer delight.

The representative study of over 2,500 affluent consumers found that delight has three big payoffs: higher loyalty, willingness to pay more, and positive word-of-mouth. Better yet, the types of delighters that have the best payoff are inexpensive, generally calling for enhancements in employee effort and behaviors, which means training investments.

Key Takeaways from the Survey:

• People (genuinely engaged in servicing customers) are the strongest source of delight – stronger than money -- cheap delighters are as effective as costly ones

• Honesty and transparency are powerful delighters even when conveying bad news

• Cross-selling more products to high-end customers often creates delight (as well as more revenue)

• Affluent customers will pay hundreds of dollars more for the same product to companies that delight

• Digital delight is as prevalent as telephone or in-person and live video chat is emerging strongly

• Higher-income, delighted men produce more social media and word of mouth recommendations than women

• Delight can be your most powerful marketing tool – over half of the people who hear about delight are reported to go on to become customers