Before we delve into the whole topic of customer satisfaction vs. customer delight, let’s touch on the core element. Customers are the lifeblood of any business because, without their demand for products or services, any market won’t exist or sustain for long. Statistics show that customer-centric businesses outperform their competitors financially.
So, there’s no doubt that customers should be your #1 priority. While customer satisfaction and customer delight are used synonymously, there’s a distinction between the two terms. The difference between the two can also be what sets a great brand apart from a pool of good brands.
What is Customer Satisfaction?
Customer satisfaction is when a brand meets the customer’s expectations and fulfills their wants through its products and services. It essentially signifies that your product/service has delivered the value that the customer expected for the price paid. Providing a satisfactory service is a good reflection of the efficiency of your business and shows that your brand is capable of meeting the demand in the market. So, while customer satisfaction in itself is a subjective concept, a high or low level of customer satisfaction is a good way to assess the performance of your business.
How to Measure Customer Satisfaction?
One of the popular metrics to measure customer satisfaction is CSAT. Through the CSAT survey, the customer can rate their satisfaction level on a numerical scale of 1-5 or 1-4. It ranges from highly dissatisfied to highly satisfied. The ideal CSAT score may depend on the benchmark set by your industry, but a score of 75 or above is generally considered good.
In addition, you can also use other metrics like EVI®, NPS, and CES to gauge satisfaction levels implicitly. In this CX KPI comparison table, you can find a comprehensive overview of pros and cons, and when is the best to measure any of the KPIs mentioned.
What is Customer Delight?
Customer delight is when customers feel overjoyed about doing business with you. It’s a step ahead of customer satisfaction and stems from an amazing customer experience. Customer delight is focused on evoking happy feelings in addition to nailing the expectation. It helps build a positive emotional connection with the clientele by delivering a good customer experience. Businesses focused on customer delight engage in different ways to please and reward their clientele, whether through words of appreciation or monetary incentives.
How to Measure Customer Delight?
One of the best metrics to capture customer delight across the buying journey is the Emotional Value Index (EVI®). It will tell you whether customers feel delighted or not. It’s a metric designed to measure the customer’s emotional experience with a brand.
With EVI®, you can identify how customers feel at any touchpoint and determine if they receive a delightful service. The survey allows customers to select an emoticon that best describes how they feel regarding an experience or service (it can be a positive or negative emotion). The emoticons are presented in a circular form to avoid survey bias. As emotions are categorized based on their effect and given weightage, calculating EVI® is easy. Check out the detailed guide on how to measure and calculate customer delight using EVI®.
What’s the Difference Between Satisfaction and Delight?
What if we say customer satisfaction is the bare minimum for brands at present?
While customer satisfaction is all about meeting expectations, customer delight is about exceeding them. Also, customer delight brings many long-term benefits to the brand.
Satisfied customers may or may not purchase from your brand again, especially if they receive the same level of satisfaction from another brand. They also won’t be hesitant to switch to another brand. But delighted customers will surely be hooked to your brand because they love the experience. As they have received a service that excels in every way, they are more likely to remain loyal.
Another key difference is that satisfied customers showcase their pleasure by reviewing or rating the product. But, delighted customers often take it upon themselves to advocate for the brand by engaging in word-of-mouth marketing. Feedbackly’s data shows that EVI® has an even 3x stronger correlation with customer loyalty than NPS.
Why Do We Need Customer Satisfaction and Customer Delight?
The above being said, these two concepts aren’t rivals. In fact, you cannot achieve the latter without mastering the former. Customer satisfaction is the foundation because it’s only after you meet customer expectations that you can focus on surpassing them and achieving customer delight!
Therefore, any brand at the beginning should focus on customer satisfaction (more positive emotions than negative) and then continuously improve the buying experience to deliver both a valuable and emotionally appealing experience (e.g. the emotion of joy or enthusiasm).
