My wish and desire for this brand new year is Customer Delight.
Yes, I want to see, feel and experience delight as a customer.
Let me take you back 365 days into the start of 2022. That was the time when we all had started putting efforts into getting back into our “normal” lives.
I took it quite slow and went out only when absolutely required. What I saw and experienced when I did venture out into stores to buy something was excessively underwhelming. The stores reeked of stale, sweaty, smelly merchandise, which was perhaps lying around in warehouses for months.
I understood that merchants would want to get rid of existing stock before restocking their shelves.
What this did to me, was that I bought only the most essential things. This was no time to browse for things and look for different options or explore stores to see what’s new out there.
As time went by, weeks flowed into months, and as a customer, I hoped and continued to hope that merchants, companies, brands would do something to show their gratitude and pleasure for having customers back in stores browsing their wares.
My disappointment over the inaction on part of the stores/brands continued for months. My longing got a fresh lease of life as the festive months came around. Eid came around the middle of the year and brought in some occasions to smile. But there was a long way to go. It might be right to say that around this time there was an attempt by marketeers to barely satisfy the customers. Delighting them was still quite a long way off.
Diwali was colorful and one could see some efforts being put into store décor, restocked with fresh looking produce.
December can be upheld as the month with the most number of efforts seen in the department of customer satisfaction. Mall decor was delightful, thankfully the stores were cheerful again!
Once could see that brands had used their marketing budgets properly and that endeavor helped make the entire shopping population merry, joyful and encouraged them to fish out their wallets effortlessly.
Was this a result of customer delight? Maybe yes. Was this the benchmark for customer delight? Absolutely NO. This was just the start line. This should have actually been the mood of the marketeers to bring in customers as they started mustering up courage to venture into shops and malls. I am nobody to comment on their strategies and business plans. This is my opinion as a customer.
What needs immediate improvement is enthusiasm in the in-store staff. Their lack of knowledge about the product range is tremendously dissatisfying. I must say here that the senior staff is much much better in this department. They know how to treat their customers, they know how to rope in the customer who is casually browsing and how to make him buy the best product for their needs and also buy that extra little something!
There could be a lot of areas for improvement in the entire shopping wonderland. I feel even toy stores are just racks of toys thrown together in some organized manner. I see no joy, no happiness in those stores. If this is the case with this category of high on impulse-buying potential stores, imagine how drab the other stores look to me!
I for one, just want to be delighted and have a smile on my face as soon as I see a storefront and almost squeal in delight as I am shown new products by courteous, helpful, knowledgeable store staff. I want to be greeted into a store by people who love their brand, their products. I want them to gush about how amazing their products are and how they will make my life better.
I am bored of making the entire buying charade myself. I want to be pushed, cajoled into considering something. I want to be offered bundle buys, great products paired together.
Bottomline is I just want brands to exceed my expectations and just DELIGHT me!
