Satisfied or Delighted?

When I hear reference to Customer Satisfaction surveys, it makes me cringe. I hate that word - Satisfaction - it's just so bland. Are your customers lukewarm because for you and your people good enough is good enough?

When I was at school, I can clearly remember the disappointment I felt when a piece of work came back with "satisfactory" written at the top. That word for me says "average, just about OK, good enough to scrape through". When I hear Customer Satisfaction, the same list pops up in my mind.

Perhaps it's the British disease, but I think it's time to change the way we think. Let's not settle for satisfactory any more. It's time to aim for nothing less than "customer delight".

So how is it done? The answer lies firstly in the way that we think about the business. The traditional top-down, do as you're told, process driven model is fundamentally flawed. We live in the age of the interactive. Your people aren't happy to just be spectators in the business, they need to be involved. If your people are involved in the direction and purpose of the business - they will be engaged. Engaged people prvide consistently exceptional customer service. Exceptional customer service leads to high levels of customer delight.

Get your people involved, get them engaged and they will deliver customer delight for you.