“Consistently delivering experiences that delight a customer creates loyal behavior that cannot be achieved through mere (customer) satisfaction alone,” according to Terry Vavra, author of “The Customer Delight Principle: Exceeding Customers’ Expectations for Bottom-Line Success” and keynote speaker at the upcoming SMT Annual meeting in Boca Raton, FL.
 
In a recent interview, Vavra, who is Chairman Emeritus of IPSOS Loyalty, the loyalty research division of the large French market research firm, noted that merely satisfying customers no longer assures they will stay with you through thick and thin.  Delighting customers, on the other hand, is a strong predictor of their behavior and those behaviors translate into repeat business and higher spending.
 
Delight is defined as “exceeding all base expectations in the performance of a product or in the delivery of a service.  Delight is the emotional response to an otherwise functional business transaction.”
 
Vavra will be speaking to SMT about how customer delight relates to sales and marketing training in a keynote address on Tuesday morning entitled “Customer Loyalty: Building It; Training for It.”. Drawing on his work for global organizations, Terry will discuss the mandates and myths of customer loyalty.  You’ll learn the keys to building successful relationships with customers and what payback (ROI) to realistically expect from loyal customers.
 
“My passion is for aftermarketing,” reveals Vavra, who also authored the book “Aftermarketing: How to Keep Customers for Life Through Relationship Marketing.” In 1985, he founded a New Jersey-based market research firm along with his wife and business partner, Linda. Then in 1989 when he was invited to Japan to speak on  future trends in American business.
 
“I spoke to the Japanese audience about the need for more focus on the current customer and it occurred to me on the airplane home that it was a way for me to differentiate my small market research company from all the other market research firms out there,” he says.  So Marketing Metrics became a marketing consulting firm focusing on customer retention, loyalty and satisfaction. The firm, which was purchased by IPSOS about 2 years ago, counts among its clients Rolls Royce, Mercedes Benz, Toys R Us, and Morgan Stanley.
 
It was one of the first companies to create a customer loyalty index – a method companies can use to distinguish loyal customers from others and to measure their value.  As it turns out, and this will be a surprise to no one in business, loyal customers are more likely to stay with you longer and to purchase more over their lifetimes.
 
His next book was called “Measuring Customer Satisfaction, “ a tool which enables companies to take actionable steps to improving customer retention. That was followed by the sequel in 2002 called “Customer Satisfaction Simplified: A Guide for ISO 9000: 2000 Certification.”
 
Vavra, who spent several years in corporate America, first with NBC News, then with BBDO and other ad agencies doing market research, recently became a grandfather for the first time.  He enjoys researching and sharing his findings with clients and readers alike.  He is currently at work on three more books and will be giving SMT a preview of his newest thinking in the area of customer retention.