When 5 year old Australian Savannah Hunt and her mum toured Europe on holiday they were accompanied by Harriet, a toy monkey from her Adelaide kindergarten. Unfortunately, while on their trip they lost her!
When Savannah’s mum Katie discovered that Harriet was missing, it was too late as they were already homeward bound. She tracked back their steps and realised that they’d left her on their trip to Buckingham Palace.
After they’d arrived back in Australia without her, staff at Savannah’s school took up the hunt and penned a letter to the Queen, politely asking her to search for the beloved monkey. They included some photos of Harriet on her travels, got all the children to sign it and posted it to Her Majesty saying ‘Have You Seen This Monkey?’
Surprisingly the next week they got a response saying that Harriet was in good care and to prove this, included photos of Harriet’s adventures around the Queen’s residence…
They also showed her being looked after by a corgi called Rex!
Harriet soon arrived back in Australia with her new friend in tow – Rex now lives in Adelaide with Harriet and all her friends!
It’s a great example of customer delight from Her Royal Highness… it demonstrates all 6 things our research has identified as ingredients of customer delight…
- It produces a wow reaction!
- It appears spontaneous or unexpected!
- It’s the personal touch!
- It makes the customer feel valued!
- It’s genuine… and…
- It creates a ‘talking point’!
Now, I don’t know whether Her Royal Highness reads my blog or has popped in to one of my presentations and maybe saw one of my favourite stories I tell when speaking about customer delight about Joshie The Giraffe, but it’s clear that she’s a real 3D Thinker and if she didn’t actually find Harriet herself and respond, but even if she didn’t, she certainly ’empowered’ her people to do so.
How do you measure up? Why not think about those ingredients and work out how you could make them work for the way you interact with your customers.
You could start by considering these questions. When it comes to your customers….
- How ’empowered’ are your people to respond to, and ‘delight’ customers?
- What do you do to help, support and encourage them to do it?
- What do they get if they do it?
For a more in-depth insight of Customer Delight, click on the image to download my free e-book Customer Delight As Competitive Advantage – 44 pages and over 60 ideas to help you make this stuff work in your business.
