Customers are the soul of every business. This is why brands, including SaaS, do everything to keep their customers.
As a SaaS brand, delighting customers is a no-brainer. Doing otherwise means losing customers to your competitors. You can avoid customer churn since delighted customers will stay loyal to you. They’ll even generate positive word-of-mouth marketing.
But how do you achieve customer delight? Let’s start at the top.
What is Customer Delight?
Customer delight is an intentional practice. It involves exceeding customers’ expectations and thus creating a positive experience. This is more than just prioritizing customers’ needs. It is about going above and beyond to spark joy in customers. Delight is the pleasure customers experience when interacting with your brand. It can result from a functional product, excellent service, or thoughtful staff engagement.
For instance, you can delight your customers by offering gifts, promotions, or discounts. You may also delight customers with intangible acts such as showing a genuine interest in their needs and offering to help.
According to the flywheel model, customer-facing teams have a role to play to ensure a customer-focused way of doing business:
In the initial phase, the marketing team and service staff collaborate to “attract” customers. The marketing and sales teams then work together to “engage” and convert leads. Finally, the sales and service teams delight customers by delivering exceptional services.
However, the teams of a truly successful company don’t stick strictly to these roles. Every team, even those who aren’t sales and service teams, surpasses customer expectations. The result? Whether it’s reading marketing emails or trying out the SaaS tool, the customer has a delightful experience.
Why Does Customer Delight Matter?
Customer delight directly impacts your growth potential. Why? Delighting customers can ensure the following benefits for your business:
- Increased customer loyalty: More than 80% of satisfied customers are more likely to upgrade or buy more of a company’s services or products. That just means delighted consumers are even more likely to remain a loyal customer base.
- Enhanced ROI: Since delighted customers are more likely to upgrade or make repeat purchases, you can expect increased ROI. A 5% increase in customer retention can increase company revenues by 25-95%.
- Improved word-of-mouth marketing: Delighted customers will likely spread the word about your brand. Almost 50% of customers with positive experiences–including delightful experiences–with a brand will share them with others.
Ultimately, when you delight customers, you turn ordinary customers into your brand ambassadors. So, they don’t just make continued purchases and engage with your brand. They reel in new customers you can delight again, who, in turn, can bring in more customers. Thanks to this never-ending cycle of lead generation, you inevitably achieve business growth and success.
How to Achieve Customer Delight
You can delight customers in several ways. Here are customer delight strategies for SaaS brands you might want to implement:
1. Provide Timely Support
Up to 40% of customers expect companies to respond to their customer support queries within four hours. So, to delight customers, make your response time even shorter. In fact, if you can, give them an instant response even if they’re in a completely different time zone and are contacting you beyond business hours. Providing this kind of timely support shows your customer base that you care about them. You’re not just helping them resolve customer issues. You’re providing additional value by helping resolve these the soonest possible time. Going the extra mile this way can turn a negative experience into a positive one for your customers.
But how can you provide this timely support in the first place? Add a chat solution to your website. As part of its customer support strategy, for instance, Hubspot integrates an AI chatbot that immediately responds to customer queries:
Complement it with a dedicated customer call support service to provide a human touch and ensure human agent responses to complex queries.
Here’s another way you can provide support in real time to delight customers: Provide self-service resources, such as tutorials and FAQs. This will help reduce friction in the support process. If you don’t have the time to write, use generative AI. It can help scale your customer support content creation and ensure the output produced is on-brand.
2. Build a Community
Want to delight your customers? Instead of just offering support resources, build a solid community.
A community ensures not just basic support but also a sense of belonging.
In a community, customers can also network with other like-minded individuals. A staggering 66% of consumers say they like engaging in online communities because they love making emotional connections with other people with similar interests. This is probably why companies are jumping on the online community bandwagon—a staggering 60% of companies have built branded online communities.
An example is Zapier:
Zapier doesn’t just let customers talk to each other. It keeps its community forum engaged by awarding badges for the best answers and posting milestones. Like Zapier, you can also hire a community manager who can get conversations rolling.
Customer delight aside, with online communities, you can also generate user feedback that you can use to enhance your products and services. Over 70% of consumers worldwide expect companies to understand their unique needs. And if you apply what you learn about what they want to your offerings, then you can delight them even more with excellent products.
3. Give a Personalized Experience to Each Customer
Almost 80% of customers said personalized messages enhanced their consideration of a brand. Go beyond their expectations by creating, not just messages that address them by name, but also tailored experiences. You’ll need to analyze your customer data for this.
For instance, you can use Google Analytics to track which of your product site sections a customer frequents or the products they usually buy. Consider your findings when sending them marketing emails.
You can also use a tool such as Leadpages to customize your landing pages. There are Leadpages alternatives at your disposal if you think the tool doesn’t fit your budget.
Here’s another idea: why not look at your customer’s SaaS product usage trends and offer customer-specific statistics? This is what Grammarly does:
It’s a great way, not just to ensure customer delight, but also to get customers excited to use your SaaS tool again.
4. Publish Company Contact Information Across Multiple Channels
Customers expect you to tell them your basic contact details. But you can exceed these expectations by making these contact details easily available, not just on one channel but across multiple channels.
Think about it. You never know what platform your customer’s using at that point in time they want to contact you. They could be on your website when they decide they need help signing up for a free trial. They could be on social media when they come across your ad promoting your newest SaaS tool.
If you publish your contact info across as many channels as possible, you make it known that you consider their convenience. You’re basically telling them you’re out to delight them by ensuring, not just customer interactions with you, but interactions on their preferred platform.
Customer Delight Examples
Ready to delight your customers? Here are examples of SaaS brands to get inspiration from:
1. HubSpot
Customers expect HubSpot to provide basic support for using their platform. However, HubSpot goes beyond that by providing certification courses through its Hubspot Academy.
Hubspot essentially takes the time to teach users the valuable skills they need to get the most of the platform–and all this for free.
2. Salesforce
Like Hubspot, Salesforce doesn’t just provide customers with standard support. It delights customers with its vibrant community called Trailblazer.
Members of the community don’t just get to learn how to optimize use of the platform from other users. They also get to interact with these like-minded individuals, enhancing their sense of belongingness.
3. Canva
Canva takes personalization to the next level. It uses product usage data to ensure tailored and positive customer experiences. It celebrates user milestones by issuing certificates whenever a user completes some designs.
This simple act breeds loyal customers and motivates them to do more with the platform.
4. Spotify
Spotify users want a streaming service that offers access to a wide range of music. However, Spotify exceeds expectations by curating personalized playlists based on individual listening habits.
Moreover, their year-end “Wrapped” feature provides a nostalgic recap of users’ year in music.
5. Netflix
Netflix subscribers want a diverse selection of shows and movies.
But Netflix goes beyond those customer expectations by providing personalized viewing experiences. It does this by using AI algorithms to track user preferences and viewing behavior.
Difference Between Customer Delight and Customer Satisfaction
Customer delight and customer satisfaction are often used interchangeably. But, as we’ve seen, they’re not the same.
Customer delight means giving customers a positive experience by exceeding their expectations. Meanwhile, customer satisfaction simply means meeting customers’ expectations.
With the high level of competition, you want to do more than just please your customers. Satisfied customers are good for business. But delighted ones are the key to long-term success.
Satisfied customers may not be loyal to your brand, especially if they get the same level of satisfaction from your competitors. Meanwhile, delighted customers are likely to become loyal brand advocates.
Common Challenges in Customer Delight
Here are common mistakes businesses, including SaaS brands, make when it comes to customer delight and potential solutions:
1. Misunderstanding Customer Expectations
SaaS brands often assume they know what delights their customers. Don’t do that. Instead, conduct surveys and interviews to collect feedback. You may also use customer data analytics to discern what will exceed customer expectations.
2. Overpromising and Underdelivering
Brands sometimes promise more than they can deliver. This then leads to disappointment and a loss of trust.
Be realistic and transparent about what you can offer. It’s better to underpromise and overdeliver.
3. Ignoring Feedback
Some SaaS brands collect feedback but don’t act on it. In doing this, they miss valuable improvement opportunities that can help them exceed customer expectations.
Create a system for reviewing customer feedback. Then use the insight to improve your products or services.
4. Failure to Innovate
Customer expectations are constantly evolving. What made your customers satisfied today might not satisfy them tomorrow. In the same manner, what delighted them today, may not delight them tomorrow.
So, stay on top of changes in customer preferences and market dynamics. Continuously monitor trends using technologies such as Google Analytics, social listening tools, among others.
Conclusion
The future of customer delight lies in exceeding expectations at every touchpoint. It is more than providing customer satisfaction. It is about evoking strong emotions like surprise and joy.
To stay ahead, you’ll need to have a 360-degree view of your customer. Because customer expectations are changing, continuous monitoring is key. You’ll need to continuously gather, analyze, and understand customer data to reveal hidden patterns. As technologies advance, you can use this data to predict customer behavior and preferences, and potential issues even more accurately. The result? You ensure a more proactive approach to customer delight.
Make it your mission to surpass customer expectations. Schedule a free personalized demo to see how Custify can help.
