How to Surprise & Delight Your Customers

Last week, we defined what it meant to give your customers a surprise and delight experience. This week, we’re going to talk about customer touch points, and how you can use each one to surprise and delight your customers.

What is a customer touch point?

A customer touch point is any time at which your customer comes in contact with your brand. This chart from Survey Monkey illustrates several basic customer touch points:

To improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, you need to make sure each touchpoint leads to a good customer experience. To take it one step further, you could develop a surprise and delight tactic for each touch point, so that you can keep your customers coming back for more!

How to use customer touch points to surprise and delight:

BEFORE:

• Ratings & Reviews: Take the time to personally address each online review, good or bad. Offer those that had a bad experience an opportunity to try your business again, at no cost to the customer.
• Social Media: Post a freebie offer on your social media page, just because. We like this example from Sugar Shack. 
• Advertising: Entice new customers or clients with a special offer. Or, encourage current customers to stop in by hosting a special event.

DURING:

• Store: Welcome your customers into your store, offering them complimentary bottled water and/or light refreshments as they shop around. Treat your restaurant customers to a complimentary appetizer or dessert, just because. 
• Employees: Have your employees make an effort to address your customers by their first name, or by Mrs.____ or Mr.______. Employees should offer carry out service for customers when they can.
• Point of Sale: Offer a customer a 10% discount, just for the fun of it! Share free samples with customers when you can.

AFTER:

• Follow-ups: Did a customer come in last week and purchase a few cases of wine for a big party? Give them a call and see how everything turned out.
• Thank You Notes: The thank you note is one of the easiest ways to surprise and delight your customers. Just saying, “Thank you for being a loyal customer” is a great way to make them smile. Go one step further and invite them to come back in for a special event.

How do you surprise and delight your customers at each turn?