delight is discipline

Vinay Kamat

Customer satisfaction comes in many names and forms. Some call it romance, some think it is delight, some equate it with value-creation. Very often, questions are raised about delight—which is a step above (customer) satisfaction. Is there a level above delight? Has anyone reached there?

Most books on customer satisfaction suffer from a 'purple cow' syndrome. The term, coined by marketing maven Seth Godin, refers to something remarkable, something awesome, that you come across in what is otherwise a boring world. So, is there a 'purple cow' in the black, white or brown world of customer satisfaction?

Yes, there is. Written in 1995, The Discipline of Market Leaders still survives as a purple cow in the brown world of customer satisfaction. Here, authors Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema show us through case studies how firms rule the market by creating a customer discipline inside and outside the organisation. Put simply, they talk about three value disciplines: operational excellence, product leadership, and customer intimacy.

Operational excellence is about continuous improvement; product leadership is about positioning; customer intimacy is about bonds. This disciplined approach helps firms to institutionalise spontaneous interactions with customers. It tells CEOs how and why to empower the last mile—the people that constantly interact with the customer.

To explain spontaneity and empowerment Treacy and Wiserama fish out a Home Depot anecdote, which centres around founder Bernie Marcus. In the back-office of one of his stores, Bernie "noticed a Sears Craftsman wrench lying in a pile of items that customers had returned. Marcus called the store's customer-service people together, held up the wrench, and asked who had accepted it as a return, since Home Depot doesn't sell Sears wrenches. One employee admitted guilt, whereupon Marcus broke into a grin. This was a great example, he said, of someone taking responsibility for doing the unorthodox to please a customer."

The example provokes one key question: How do you suffuse your organisation with an 'unorthodox' spirit? You don't, you just create the right value disciplines throughout the organisation that focus on product quality, customer focus, and brand positioning.

Such a culture will automatically empower last-mile employees to satisfy the customer in out-of-box ways to create delight, delight and more delight. But before that happens, firms must set up route-maps for delivering superior customer value. It is a simple process that Treacy and Wiersema narrate so delightfully.