LEADER ARTICLE
The Instinctive Corporation: Delight as the Basis of Customer Satisfaction

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">Whatever their strategic rationale, firms are very much like people. They are fashion-conscious, embracing every new management fad that debuts on global corporate catwalks. Trends are sampled, savoured and structured at great cost. Yet, most management fads have failed to create flexible organisations that react to the environment instinctively.<br /><br />All that firms end up doing in the catch-up game is turning processes into procedures and relationships into rituals.Very few firms are sensitive to, accommodative of, and knowledgeable about the external environment. If the ultimate aim of the organisation is to satisfy the customer, then the firm cannot afford to be a predictable, mimicking machine.<br /><br />The customer is no longer the king; she''s the emperor. She doesn''t rely on customer satisfaction any more; she desires customer delight. After all, customer satisfaction is predictable; like quality, it is a given in today''s environment. Delight, a higher form of satisfaction, is unpredictable; it comes as a surprise. When a car-manufacturer withdraws a model even though it has a minor defect, fully compensating the buyer even before she has experienced the flaw, the seller breaks the customer-satisfaction barrier.<br /><br />But is it the right time for Indian firms to indulge customers with delight when they haven''t even begun to create satisfaction? Yes, if they have to win tomorrow''s battles now. In today''s marketplace, experience is becoming more important than the product. That''s what Apples iPod + iTunes is all about. Yet, most firms fail to gauge the rising expectations of the customer. Any increase in satisfaction is, at best, incremental. For, competitive advantages are based on linear ways of competing.<br /><br />Operational effectiveness and product innovation are both essential. But they may not necessarily differentiate a firm in the marketplace. To do so, a firm will have to reconfigure its ultimate value activity — its relationship with the customer. And it will have to do so in a non-linear manner, by shifting from predictability to unpredictability, from expectation to surprise. When infotech major Wipro completes projects for its global customers ahead of the promised time, there is only wow at the other end.<br /><br />Delight is now becoming desirable because of the deconstruction of the value chain and the growing significance of the supplier. When a firm tries to focus on what it knows best, outsourcing its secondary activities, it must redirect its resources at reinforcing its relationship with the customer. Virtually integrated companies are better focused on the customer than vertically, or horizontally, integrated organisations. But virtual organisations must work with their suppliers in a transparent manner. They cannot hide their own customer profile from the supplier, who, after all, is a critical link in the value-chain. Naturally, the global giant Dell Computers is redefining supply and demand chain management. While its suppliers are connected to its crucial customer base to keep them abreast of demand fluctuations, Dell allows its customers to track orders real-time.<br /><br />With firms interacting with the customer real-time on the Net, the supplier is clued to the specs of the end-customer as well. It helps the supplier to meet the firm''s manufacturing and distribution schedules as much as it helps the firm to satisfy, or delight, its customer. And if the supplier happens to possess key proprietary technology or massive economies of scale, as some global auto suppliers do, all that the supplier has to do to increase its clout is move downstream, upstaging the firm and winning over its customers.<br /><br />Delight is becoming the surest way to retain competitive advantage. But delight is unplanned; it is an impromptu response to an unknown situation. To paraphrase self-management guru Deepak Chopra, it occurs in non-local space. It happens outside the world of processes. It is a bold, blind experiment that redefines lab procedures. It requires delight-innovators, not traditional salesmen.<br /><br />The beauty of delight lies in its ability to raise the customer-satisfaction barrier. For, the moment a delight transaction is widely appreciated, the greater the chances of the firm''s entire field force using it as a competitive template. But that''s not the only way a delight transaction loses its freshness and innovativeness. Soon, competitors are likely to copy it as well. That is why delight must be a ceaseless innovation, not a random occurrence.<br /><br />Delight is effective only when the organisation is sharply focused, and puts customer loyalty above its compulsions to expand customer base. Delight doesn''t come cheap. Imagine an airline booking a customer on its competitor''s flight in an emergency — even paying her fare. By treating the customer as an individual, an organisation exhibits individualism. Innovative interactions with the customer can, indeed, rejuvenate the firm and revitalise its processes. A wholesome strategy is a marriage between strategy and intuition, brought about by the most potent catalyst: The customer. For Indian firms, the message is clear: Before the marketplace starts demanding customer ecstasy, it is better to pamper the customer with delight, and more delight.<br /><br /><span style="" font-style:="" italic="">(This idea on customer satisfaction was first carried in these pages on August 13, 1999.)</span></div> </div>