Here’s a great example of customer delight from Sainsburys!
When 3 year old Lily Robinson (sorry,3 and a half year old Lily Robinson!) wrote to Sainsburys to ask them why tiger bread isn’t called giraffe bread which she thinks it should be because it looks more like a giraffe, she got a personalised response from customer manager Chris King (aged 27and a 1/3!).
As well as explaining the reasons and praising Lily for her suggestion, she sent Lily a £3 Sainsburys gift voucher – simple but effective stuff! It’ has a number of the ingredients of ‘customer delight’: spontaneous, personal, makes the customer feel valued and is ‘remarkable’ – people ‘remark’ about it!
It would have been easy to a) ignore it or b) send a standard ‘thanks for your comment’ letter, but Chris’s personalised response, although obviously taking a bit more effort certainly did the trick! (It also got Sainsbury’s some ‘free’ publicity and lots of ‘word of mouse’ – this blog is just another example!
Here’s the response from Chris a bit closer up (click on it to make it bigger!)
I highlighted a similar example last year by Marks & Spencer when one of their guys ‘delighted a customer by dinosaur’!
Personalised responses to customers are a great way of demonstating you care – they make customers feel valued, and crucially, they tell others!
Yes, personalised responses are ‘remarkable’!