Customer Satisfaction to Customer Delight

Customer Satisfaction comes with top quality and on-time delivery as captured/defined in the Scope. Customer Delight is something which has to be earned with right customer engagement skills or knowledge to further their interest and here are some of the key areas we may need to focus to reach the level of Customer Delight. 1. Understand customer’s expectation – not many understand the context of understanding expectation. It’s really difficult to know for sure what exactly is their expectation. It’s not the Business Requirement Document that lays down the expectation of the client. It’s the requirement of the project. To know better their expectation, one must engage closely and get to know how exactly the project would be put to use to maximize returns or increase ROI. Our task is to increase the turnaround time to accelerate the time to market, but once that’s done what happens? Many vendors stop the buck once the UAT is through, instead look beyond the obvious and seek to serve to further client’ interest. 2. Know the Business Model (Revenue Model): One should know the customer’s business model to serve them better. We should know their customer base, their mission/vision on the business and pertaining details to better understand the scope on their perspective. Many times projects fail because we go with what is there in the paper (Scope definition) rather we should understand what it means to the customer and their value that they want to arrive out of the project. 3. Customer’s Market Space: It’s very important to know their customer base where they plan to use the delivery of the project. And if there is anything we should be aware based on the region (legal or regulatory compliances of the respective regions), then learn first-hand and don’t expect customer to inform us, rather as vendors it should be our responsibility to take care of legal compliances. 4. Know your customer’s requirements: One to be successful has to understand what customer wants and what their pain points with their customers or end-users are and how best to fix it at the earliest. It’s walking that additional mile to accommodate ad-hoc changes which will earn the trust and value of the client. A small act goes a long way, and if you are mindful to address the pain points, the client’s perspective about your potential will be exceedingly positive as a ‘reliant and dependent’ partner. 5. Always offer more. Satisfied customer is more precious than a new customer. Repeat orders are the ones that helps to sustain business. While new prospects or customers move the needle with regard to revenue, it’s the repeat orders that provides consistency and constant inflow. The mushrooming promotion platforms notwithstanding, it’s still the word of the mouth that the powerful source of advertisement and a customer vouching for your credibility will in fact be passed on to another. So always do more than what is required. These are some of our thoughts we wished to share and in subsequent post we will deliberate more about exceeding expectation. Do drop in a line as a comment.

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