Experience Action
How do we do this customer experience thing anyway? Join award-winning customer experience (CX) expert Jeannie Walters as she answers real questions from overwhelmed leaders! Let's turn ideas into ACTION! From company culture to employee experience (EX) to customer service, Jeannie wants to help you demystify the process for enriching the customer experience. With over 20 years investigating the best and worst in CX, this international keynote speaker has heard it all... and now she's here to give you the answers you need! You won't want to miss an episode! Do you have a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail!
Experience Action
Surprise, Delight, or Just Get It Right?
Is “surprise and delight” really the secret to customer loyalty, or is reliability your real superpower? In this episode, we challenge one of CX’s biggest myths: that delight always wins.
Many brands, especially in B2B, utilities, or financial services, build trust not through flashy moments but through consistent, dependable service. We explore how neglected touchpoints, like billing or scheduling, can become powerful moments of emotional connection when approached with a bit of personality and care.
You’ll also learn how to build an “emotional bank account” that pays off during service hiccups, and why small, intentional improvements can be more impactful than chasing viral wow moments. Think TSA’s surprisingly fun social media presence as inspiration.
Tune in to rethink what really drives customer trust—and how your brand can strike the right balance between consistency and creativity.
Resources Mentioned:
Experience Investigators Website -- https://experienceinvestigators.com
What Are Micromoments & Why Are They So Important? -- https://experienceinvestigators.com/customer-journey-maps/tedx-jeannie-walters/
Download the free CX Mission Statement Workbook -- https://bit.ly/cx-mission-workbook
Want to ask a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail! (And don't forget to follow Jeannie on LinkedIn! www.linkedin.com/in/jeanniewalters/)
Experience Action. Let's stop just talking about customer experience, employee experience and the experience of leaders. Let's turn ideas into action. Your host, jeanne Walters, is an award-winning customer experience expert, international keynote speaker and founder of Experience Investigators, a strategic consulting firm helping companies increase sales and customer retention through elevated customer experiences. Ready Set Action.
Jeannie Walters:It's the Experience Action Podcast. I'm here for your questions, so buckle up, we've got a good one.
Listener Question:Hey Jeannie, this is Brian. I hear a lot of talk about surprise and delight in CX, but in our business, just getting things right consistently seems way more important. Do you think every brand needs to shoot for delight, or is reliable delivery enough in some cases?
Jeannie Walters:Fantastic question, Brian, and I think that this is one of those things that has kind of taken over the customer experience landscape. We hear about things like we need to surprise and delight and assume that that applies to everybody, all sorts of organizations, whether you're B2C or B2B or nonprofit or anything else. But I agree with you here, Brian, and I'm going to walk through a few reasons why I don't believe we have to surprise and delight every single customer. I don't believe that we can promise those big wow moments all the time, because that will lead to disappointment. So how should we approach this? Well, there is absolutely a place for surprise and delight. There is absolutely a place where it makes sense because we as humans, we love pleasant surprises. We want to make sure we are empowering employees who are able to deliver that, especially in industries like hospitality or even in healthcare, places like that where we want people to feel very cared for individually. That is really important. However, when we are talking about customer experience, that is the entire journey, right? That is everything from awareness through when they become our biggest advocate or when they leave us, and when we look at that journey, in some industries, it's actually best if our customer never really thinks about us. I'm thinking about some of the clients that we've worked with. We've worked with utilities like gas, electric, and, you know what, we tend not to think about our providers of the utility until there's a problem as a customer. So we want to be as reliable as possible, we want to be as proactive as possible. We want to make sure that our customers are actually not thinking about us. That's the ideal scenario. So when we think about those things and shift the lens a little bit, we still want to look at kind of reliability as the absolute baseline. When we are delivering what the customer expects in the way that they expect it reliably, consistently and in a way where they don't have problems, they don't have service issues, that is a win.
Jeannie Walters:But we are all competing against the customer expectations that are being set outside of our industries. We all have those expectations of immediate convenience. We want to access the information that we want in the channel that we want. We want to be able to call somebody or look at an app or go online based on our preference. So if we're not providing those types of resources to really meet those expectations, then we might not be as reliable as we might be telling ourselves. So make sure when you think about what does reliable delivery mean that you're really mapping that out. You're thinking about what is that? Not just the basics, not just the baseline of I'm giving you exactly what you paid for, but are they able to access their information? Are they able to have clear understanding of billing and how to pay? Do they have access to schedules that might be important to them? One schedule we just talked about with a client was about trash pickup, right? So when there's a holiday and people think that their trash is being picked up but it's not, that's very disruptive to them. That's one of those service issues, even though technically it's not a problem. So, when you think about your customer's journey, no matter what it is, think about what does it mean for them to see us as reliable and consistent? That's number one.
Jeannie Walters:Next, I would say look at what are those neglected moments? I call them the meh moments. Right, these are moments that probably don't really cause a scene, but what if you could make them a little better? For example, billing. This is an issue everywhere. Right, we have to bill our customers. We have to make sure that our customers pay for the service or product that we're providing. But what if billing is painful? What if they don't have the information at their fingertips that they need? What if they don't have control over when they get billed? What if they have a question about it? If we are doing it just like everyone else has always done it in the history of mankind, we are missing opportunities to turn up the volume. I call this over-indexing on the positive moments so that when things go wrong because they will you have trust in that emotional bank. You've built up that relationship. They know they can trust you.
Jeannie Walters:So look for the moments that you might be neglecting in the customer journey and think about can we do this a little better? Can we give our customers a little more control? Can we offer a moment of delight? You know, a funny example of this lately is the TSA, the airport security in the United States, their social media recently they've been sending out reminders, but the way they're doing it is a little tongue-in-cheek, a little fun. And so, as you get these reminders, yes, you get the information you need as a customer, but you also have that little moment of delight. So, while it might not be a big wow moment, they can't change how they screen for security, right, they can't treat people differently. That's the whole point. But with the reminders, with communication, they're turning up the volume a little bit. They're having a little fun, they're being more proactive, more fun, and so that's creating that moment of surprise and delight.
Jeannie Walters:So, while I don't think it's necessary to say, yes, everybody has to aim for those big, huge moments all the time, I do think there's usually an opportunity to create those positive moments that help somebody smile in an unexpected way. But reliable customer experience, that is, consistently delivering what is expected, that is absolutely goal number one. Because if you are not doing the basics, if you are not delivering on that, but hey, your social media is killing it, nobody's going to care if they're a customer and they're not getting what they want, in fact, that could feel like, hey, you're investing in the wrong place, you're not getting this right. So if you are thinking about your industry right now and you're thinking, well, we actually don't want our customers to think about us or we don't have moments of delight, we have just consistency.
Jeannie Walters:Where on the journey could you over-index on the positive? Could you make it more convenient? Could you make it faster? Could you offer a little moment where, through the language you use or the imagery, or just even training your people to provide that moment of delight, provide a little humor, a little fun. That can all go a long, long way. So I'm going to leave you with this. Number one, you are absolutely right, prioritize consistency. We want to make sure we are delivering a consistent experience that is not only meeting but hopefully exceeding the expectations of our customers all the time. Consistency is what builds trust, so we want to make sure that we are consistent not just in what we say, but also how the customer experiences the product or service that we deliver.
Jeannie Walters:I also want you to look for those micro moments. I have a whole TEDx talk on this, but those micro moments that could be neglected. These are moments that maybe everybody does it the same way right now, today, you could try to do it a little differently. That's where you can find accessible places in the journey to really provide that little moment of delight, little moment of surprise, and then, finally, leverage customer feedback. What are your customers telling you about what they want? Maybe they want a little refinement of something that you offer. Maybe they're saying, yeah, this is good, but this could be a little better. Really look for those and see if you could adapt or make some small changes that will reflect to your customers we heard you, we're innovating, we are staying ahead, even if it's not a big, huge wow moment. So I hope this is helpful, because this is one of those things that I hear a lot about.
Jeannie Walters:People tell me all the time oh yeah, I'm really good at surprise and delight. It's the rest of my company that's not. Well, that's not a consistent experience. So let's make sure we get everybody on the same page. As we like to say, customer experience is everyone's business, so let's make sure everybody's on the same page. Have that North Star, talk about what kind of experience you want to deliver and then look for those moments where you can over-index on the positive so that you can always overcome the negative. Great question, keep them coming. You know I love these questions, don't forget. You can ask me at any time at askjeannievip. That's Jeannie with two Ns. All right, I cannot wait to hear from you again and we will see you next time. To learn more about our strategic approach to experience, check out free resources at experienceinvestigatorscom, where you can sign up for our newsletter, our Year of CX program and more, and please follow me, Jeannie Walters, on LinkedIn.
