Sometimes people just want what they expect and to get on with their lives.
I’ve never felt comfortable with that marketing mantra, “delight your customers.” Although surely sometimes that’s in order (such as when you’re launching in a competitive market, or in a customer service encounter), delight is fickle and wears off almost instantly. In fact you might say that delight causes a brand to raise the bar on itself with every use. That can get really expensive in brandland.
Most of the time customers simply want your brand to meet their expectations and let them get on with their lives. Just like air. Air is invisible, we take it for granted, but when it’s not there, we get a little upset. That’s what most brand experiences should be like: transparent, yet mission critical.
I don’t know about you, but if I had to be “delighted” with every brand experience, I’d be desensitized before noon on Monday. Doesn’t it make more sense to simply meet or beat customer expectations with consistent brand performance?
Instead of impressing me with new delights, focus your efforts on keeping me loyal. For instance, if I hit a little snag in my brand experience, make sure customer service comes through with single-call resolution. That’s a pretty cheap solution for the brand and may get me to mention my satisfaction to a friend or two…and word of mouth branding is “(bleeping) golden!”
Would you agree that consistency is more important and more realistic than delight? OK, maybe you want to inspire an occasional delight…a mild delight….a slight-smile-at-the-edges-of-your-mouth-for-half-a-second delight. But a lot of time that can simply result from a situation in which your customer strays from your brand, experiences dissatisfaction elsewhere, and comes back to your brand…the delight of realizing yours is a brand that can be trusted (“there’s no place like home”).
What do you think about consistently delighting customers? Is it realistic? Blog it here.
For more on this subject, there’s a great article in July’s Harvard Business Review. http://hbr.org/product/stop-trying-to-delight-your-customers/an/R1007L-PDF-ENG
French On Brand 
Greg,
I don’t usually respond to articles or postings, so pardon my somewhat clumsy reply. However, this particular topic struck a chord with me and I felt obligated to provide some counter thoughts. Also, I mean no disrespect to you or Dixon, Freeman and Toman on their research, but I think we may be getting away from some fundamental issue about what “brand” and “customer delight” mean in the context of your post.
If I think of “brand” as a business composed of many processes rather than an endpoint or “product” I have a very different perspective on whether I want my brand to be “just like air.” I think that I want my brand to continually represent me and my company at the highest level possible to my customers rather than to be relegated to some minimal standard (“breathable air”) or basic level of consistent competence.
During my graduate study, one of my classes was to study William Deming and his Total Quality Management system. A recurring theme in my study was of delighting the customer and as I was reading your post my thoughts kept returning to Deming. From that perspective, Deming’s “Profound Knowledge” can be applied to brand quite easily. The four foundational parts are:
1. Appreciation for a System
2. Knowledge of Variation
3. Theory of Knowledge
4. Psychology of Change
For example:
1. Brand can be viewed as a whole system with multiple, interrelated processes and people who need to work collaboratively and cooperatively to optimize the result.
2. Collection of relevant data coupled with continuous beneficial improvements will stabilize, grow and improve the brand.
3. Strategically see the future for the brand.
4. Optimize the interactions of people to improve the brand.
Only the second pillar, Knowledge of Variation, really applies to your comment on rating consistency as more important than delight. I guess I wouldn’t want to settle for 25% – I want it all! And maybe that’s what set me writing. I believe that both businesses and consumers should expect and demand more. In the Deming model, customer delight is the result of continually improving your brand system rather than some item to be included free in your shopping cart. I don’t think of higher expectations and increasing delight factors as some type of ever towering spiral, but as a journey that shows me new and better scenes from different perspectives. And yes, there are some delightful things to appreciate along the way.
Thanks for making me think about this topic.