Customer Surprise and Delight Strategies that Work

**SPEAKER_2** (0:03)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:17)
Hello and welcome back to the show. I'm Stephen Sakach here with Tullio Siragusa and Ash Maher once again.
Last episode, we talked about some purpose-related campaign ideas to emotionally connect with customers. Today, we want to take another approach to that emotional connection with your customers. This is often described as surprise and delight strategies. You know that feeling when you find that $20 in that jacket pocket that you haven't worn for a year or two. This is the business equivalent of that, where you're just like, oh wow.
The classic example of this is the baker's dozen, getting that extra item when you've ordered a dozen. That goes back centuries. Another example I mentioned previously, it's like getting a free matching pair of socks with those shoes you just ordered. It's something unexpected. This is our quest today.
You might have also heard this referred to as Lanyard, or there's a book called What's Your Purple Goldfish by Stan Phelps. He has several other books on the topic. If you want to take a deeper dive, he's kind of the Jedi Master here, but we're going to dive into some customer services, that surprise and delight, and how it really is a marketing opportunity to build loyalty and word of mouth.
And I want to start off with some examples. Let's kick it off with Chewy. This is not another Star Wars reference. I'm talking about Chewy, the online pet supply company as a good example here. So picture this, a customer had asked if they could return some dog food that was unopened after their dog had died. And Chewy said, yeah, no problem. Gave them a full refund, told them to donate the food to a shelter, and then had flowers delivered with a gift note signed by the customer rep. And they mentioned the pet's name. So first off, good job. Good job being a human. Good job showing some empathy and compassion. Yes, thumbs up, clap.
You know, this is a sad time in someone's life, and you just don't want to be like, yeah, you can return that, or yeah, no refund policy, right? They're going above and beyond here. And good job by Chewy empowering their reps. You know, this is how you build that love into your business, how you build that authenticity, right? This isn't a one-off. They do this regularly. What are you guys' thoughts on this one by Chewy?

**Tullio Siragusa** (2:52)
I just don't look forward to that moment.
I'm a Chewy customer, but that is phenomenal. You know, rather than get caught up on, well, you know, policy is we don't take returns. They just want to facilitate a great experience, be there for the customer when it's the most critical time to be there.
And do something nice on behalf of their customer and even their pet. And so guess what's going to happen, you know, when that person eventually gets another pet? They're just going to have tremendous loyalty to Chewy because they were there for them. So great job. Seriously, I mean, that is going above and beyond.
And just like you said, just being human and just having a lot of empathy in the most difficult moment for someone, but also building incredible connection as a result of that too.

**Ash Maher** (3:50)
Absolutely, and I have to add to that. I mean, imagine the stories being told to the friends and families after the fact. When someone's going through such a loss, I mean, we have my Judy and my knowledge, so I have to imagine myself in that scenario, someone showing that level of empathy, being human, I would be in tears. I would immediately call someone that I would want to confide or someone I want to share this information with that may also have a pet. It could be a network or a community of pet owners that I'd like to share this experience I had with Chewy. So it just had opened up a whole conversation too, where someone wants to openly, as an ambassador, speak to something that really meant a lot to them. I think you get that customer forever, they get their next pet, their friends get their pets, they're all coming to Chewy for that experience.

**Stephen Sakach** (4:29)
Ash, is that your dog?

**Ash Maher** (4:31)
That is my dog right now.

**Tullio Siragusa** (4:32)
Don't worry, I'm going to eat the food, I'm going to finish it off.

**Ash Maher** (4:36)
She's giving her thoughts on the matter.