Many companies’ approach to customer experience focuses on eliminating negatives (“was your customer service rep knowledgeable?  Was your hold time acceptable?) rather than increasing positives or “delighting” the customer.

Of course, it’s important to ensure customers don’t have a terrible experience.  But a great deal of research has shown that focusing on customer delight has significantly greater return on investment than eliminating negatives.

• In their book “The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact,” Chip Heath and Dan Heath examined data from Forrester and found that elevating positive experiences creates nine times more revenue than eliminating negative experiences.

• Another Forrester study found companies that prioritize customer experience grow their revenue 1.7 times faster than companies that don’t, and they also increase their customer lifetime value by 2.3 times more.

• Watermark Consulting looked at thirteen years of stock performance of companies that are customer experience leaders and found that customer experience leaders outperformed the broader market, generating a total return that was 108 points higher than the S&P 500 Index and they generated a total cumulative return that was 3.4 times greater than that of customer experience laggards.

In “The Power of Moments,” the Heath brothers provide two great examples of companies who have profited significantly from customer delight:

• You know the funny safety announcements that sometimes happen on Southwest Airlines?  (E.g., “the smoking section on this airplane is on the wing.”)  The company was able to calculate the impact of hearing a funny flight announcement on customers’ likelihood of flying Southwest: they flew an average of half a flight more over the next year than did similar customers who hadn’t heard one.  They calculated that if Southwest could double the number of customers hearing a funny flight safety announcement, the result would be more than $140 million in revenue per year.

• Sharp Healthcare made a significant investment to improve the patient experience.  Beyond the medical care patients received, they wanted to improve the service experience.  For example, caregivers stopped talking over patients and actually introduce themselves and explain their roles.  In the five years since starting the effort, net revenue increased by half a billion dollars.

Figuring out how to elevate the customer experience requires investing some resources and some creative thinking – but the result is clearly worth the investment.

How can you delight your customers?  Let’s talk to them and find out!  Email me at info at bureauwest.com.

Sources: “The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact,” Chip Heath and Dan Heath, 2017; “The Business Impact Of Investing In Experience,” Forrester, June, 2021; “2021 Customer Experience ROI Study,” Watermark Consulting, 2021