What do my customers need? An astute Marketing Manager knows that customer experience(CX) is most crucial for his business. He lays importance on understanding how they can deliver better rather than what they deliver. To ameliorate CX, the savvy marketers focus on the journey instead of touch points to improve the experience.
Yet, sometimes managers confuse the word Customer Experience with customer delight. Whereas in actual scenario Customer delight is a small part of CX. To understand this better, we need to understand the difference between CX and customer delight.
Customer Delight is achievable only at the touch points and creates a short term impact on the consumer base. It helps in earning customer loyalty for a short span, with minuscule chances of conversion into brand advocates. Optimizing a single customer journey to create a delight is tactical. Whereas, shifting organizational processes, culture, and mindsets to a journey orientation for better CX is strategic and transformational.
Therefore, the organizations need to identify appropriate tailored metrics, to measure customer experience and bring the operational and cultural shift, that engages the organization across functions. Customer Delight, on the other hand, can be made a part of CX to meet the short term goals like creating viral stories.
Customer Experience
Customer Experience is the perception the customer has about your brand. Everything a brand does from messaging to post sale engagement, contributes to customer perception. Also, the customer perception is volatile and a single distasteful interaction can change it, which makes its constant maintenance, vital.Customer Delight
Customer Delight, on the other hand, is rewarding the customer beyond his expectations. It is the final step in the inbound method to create a positive emotional reaction. It helps in creating brand evangelists and sometimes gives a competitive edge.Why Customer Experience > Customer Delight?
Customer Delight can help in earning a short period loyalty, but one bad experience and everything evaporates, whereas Customer Experience is a constant activity, which builds the brands reputation over time. According to an HBR Research, an organization which manages their customer experience, reap extraordinary rewards: enhanced customer satisfaction, reduced churn, increased revenue, and greater employee satisfaction.
Customer Delight is achievable only at the touch points and creates a short term impact on the consumer base. It helps in earning customer loyalty for a short span, with minuscule chances of conversion into brand advocates. Optimizing a single customer journey to create a delight is tactical. Whereas, shifting organizational processes, culture, and mindsets to a journey orientation for better CX is strategic and transformational.
Therefore, the organizations need to identify appropriate tailored metrics, to measure customer experience and bring the operational and cultural shift, that engages the organization across functions. Customer Delight, on the other hand, can be made a part of CX to meet the short term goals like creating viral stories.