VIPdesk and Customer Care Measurement & Consulting (CCMC) have the pleasure to announce the final results of the first-ever nationwide Customer Delight Study. The Customer Delight Study surveyed the impact of customer delight on purchase behavior, customer loyalty, and word-of-mouth activity. Creating customer delight goes above and beyond just offering great customer service. Delighted customers have experienced an interaction that significantly exceeded their expectations and was memorable to them. To create representative results with a margin of error below 2%, CCMC surveyed more than 2,500 affluent individuals with an average household income of $100,000 or more.

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CCMC has quantified the revenue and word of mouth impact of an improved customer experience via customer surveys for two decades as well as assessing employee engagement, B2C and B2B service systems, and Voice of the Customer processes.

John Goodman, Vice Chairman of CCMC summarizes the results as follows: “Customers say they are much more delighted and more likely to spend money with a company that has customer service representatives who are honest and engaged during the interaction. Monetary delighters like offering a good value for money and providing extra value, certainly increase a customer’s willingness to spend more with a company, but these ‘people delighters’ can be just as effective.”

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The key findings of the national Customer Delight Study are as follows:

• People (genuinely engaged in servicing customers) are the strongest source of delight – stronger than money – cheap delighters are as effective as costly ones
• Honesty and transparency are powerful delighters even when conveying bad news
• Cross-selling more products to high-end customers often creates delight (as well as more revenue)
• Affluent customers will pay hundreds of dollars more for the same product to companies that delight
• Digital delight is as prevalent as telephone or in person
• Live video chat is emerging strongly
• Higher-income, delighted men produce more social media and word of mouth recommendations than other customer groups
• Delight can be your most powerful marketing tool – over half of the people who hear about delight are reported to go on to become customers

Sally Hurley, CEO at VIPdesk added: “The results of the Customer Delight Study are fascinating and are confirming our elevated customer experience approach. At VIPdesk, we view every customer interaction as an opportunity to create a memorable customer experience. This is who we are and what has always been part of our Concierge DNA. It is wonderful to see that the study could prove that such experiences have a positive impact on customer loyalty, willingness to pay higher prices, and an increase in word-of-mouth promotions.”

CCMC will continue to analyze the data and release additional findings as they become available. VIPdesk will work with its family of clients to utilize the data with the goal to further elevate the customer experience by focusing on the most effective delighters. CCMC and VIPdesk will provide a detailed overview of the data including firsthand experiences with implementing the findings at ICMI’s Contact Center Expo on Thursday, September 9.