Your brain has a gatekeeper. His name is Broca. He protects your brain from all the boring, mundane and predictable in the world.

Roy H. Williams, aka, The Wizard of Ads, was the first person to introduce me to Broca. Most advertisements fail because Broca saw them coming a mile away. But it isn’t just ads that Broca blocks.

Tell me all the mundane things you did yesterday. Bet you can’t remember them all.

Tell me all the surprising things that happened yesterday. Bet you nailed that list.

According to Roy, “Surprise is the foundation of delight.”

If you want to delight your customers, you have to do something surprising. If you want to make your customers’ experience memorable, you can’t be boring, mundane or predictable.

Strativity Group Inc. in a new survey, found that people who had been “delighted” by their favorite brand were more than twice as likely to be brand-loyal than those who weren’t delighted.

Another Royism… “If a person expected something to happen, and it happened, there can be no delight.”

• If you give your customer less than she expects, she’s going to shred you.
• If you give a customer exactly what she expects, at least she won’t shred you, but she won’t be loyal, either.
• If you surprise a customer with more than what she expects, you’ll be memorable and she’ll be loyal.

Go ahead and surprise her. That’s the loyalty program you really should be offering.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS The easiest way to surprise and delight her is to evaluate all the interaction points a customer has with your store from the front door to the checkout and figure out exactly what she expects during each encounter. Then figure out what you can do that is a little bit more than she expects. It is far cheaper to you and more effective on her than any discount you might offer her.

PPS Need a head start on evaluating what she expects? Download the FREE e-book – Customer Service: From Weak to WOW!