15 Excellent Ways To Surprise And Delight Customers

Delivering a quality customer experience is one of the most important aspects of running a business. As successful marketers know, providing valuable products and services and being available for questions and concerns are important factors, but not the whole equation when it comes to giving customers an all-around excellent experience.

To really stand out among your competitors, you’ll want to go even further above and beyond for your customers than they might be expecting, adding value at every touch point.

Below, 15 experts from Forbes Agency Council share their favorite ways of surprising and delighting prospects and customers. Try their tips to deepen your customer relationships.

1. Help Them Connect With A Valuable Contact

I connect them with a valuable contact for future business. It is the best way to add value and show that I care, and it is so simple. Connect them with resources, partners, brands and customers. It really is the best sort of gift! – Suzanne Rosnowski, Relevance International

2. Show Them What’s Possible

Explode the ceiling of what the client thinks is possible. Expose them to new tactics, new tools and new networks. Broaden their perspective, leaving them different and improved from when they reached out to you. – Dan Cohen, Full Court Press Communications

3. Always Underpromise And Overdeliver

Underpromise and overdeliver in everything you do. There is no better way to delight clients and get five-star reviews. Invest heavily in client-friendly project managers too. Never forget that it is always about the people. – David Gaz, The Bureau Of Small Projects

4. Provide Results And Tokens Of Appreciation

To surprise and delight our clients, we rely on a combination of results and tokens of our appreciation. For example, we’ve ordered custom cookies with our client’s logo and ours as a thank-you and to congratulate them when their campaigns exceed KPI goals. They not only appreciate that we went the extra step but, more importantly, that we’re equally invested in their business success and goals. – Stephanie Shreve, PowerChord

5. Demonstrate Early Results With Pilot Campaigns

Nothing surprises and delights customers like results. We use proof of concept testing and pilot campaigns to show clients early results, get them excited about working with us and set their expectations. We’ll even use this approach with prospects before they sign a contract to give them a sense of what they can achieve with our data and services. – Paula Chiocchi, Outward Media, Inc.

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6. Use Humor To Humanize Your Brand

We have great success using humor to surprise and delight our clients and their customers, especially when the channel or project type (e.g., emails, corporate video, etc.) is not known for being funny. Skillfully and consistently applied, humor creates a unique voice, humanizes the brand, encourages customer loyalty and draws the audience into the content, rather than repelling them. – Scott Greggory, MadAveGroup

7. Be Honest About The Value You Can Add

We all want to be accommodating, and we all consider ourselves problem-solvers, so we have a tendency to agree to everything a customer or prospect asks for whether we can accommodate the request or not. When you can’t do what is being asked, there is nothing wrong with simply saying that. Add value where you can, and when you can’t, say so. Nothing will surprise them (or build credibility) more than that. – Lori Paikin, NaviStone®

8. Think Long-Term And Proactively

My favorite way to surprise and delight customers and prospects is to overdeliver. There is always an opportunity to go above and beyond what they are asking for. One way to do this is to begin thinking long-term, taking what is in the client brief and not only creating work that is reactive to it, but also thinking proactively about how to build upon it down the road. – Jonathan Hanson, Unconquered

9. Overdeliver In Ways That Matter To Them

Overdeliver on products or services that will positively impact their life. Having a container of dog treats at a coffee shop near a dog park is quite smart. Having a container of dog treats at a coffee shop in downtown Chicago probably won’t have the same impact. Sending your marketing clients a white paper on how digital marketing has changed is smart. Think about what matters for your target. – Michael McFadden, eAccountable

10. Celebrate Their Personal Wins

Get to know them personally and celebrate their life wins. Know their kids’ names, where they graduated college, sports allegiances and pets and share milestones with them. Any agency can form client relationships, but the magic happens when you get to know them as people and have a genuine interest in them as humans. Send birthday cards and customized gifts; it goes a long way. – Lindsey Groepper, BLASTmedia

11. Give Value For Free

I’m a big believer in educating prospects and customers. Even if they decide to work with someone else, we want to make sure they understand what it really takes to achieve the results they are looking for. So giving away high-quality information via podcasts, YouTube videos and social media posts is what we do consistently to surprise and delight our prospects. – Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS

12. Set Realistic And Specific Metrics You Can Beat

I am going to sound cliché for saying this, but outperforming expectations never fails. That’s why it is so important to set realistic and very specific measures of success up front. Beating KPIs may not be a surprise to you, but it will surprise and delight your customers as few things can. – Lon Otremba, Bidtellect

13. Make The Client Shine

My favorite way to surprise and delight a client is to make them shine. We all have someone to answer to and goals we have to hit. Our agency works with as many sales teams as we do brand managers. We see it as our job to arm them with the exact tools they need to shine in their careers. – Patrick Nycz, NewPoint Marketing

14. Send A Care Package

Send them a care package that speaks to who they are, what they need and how you feel about them. When you know your client well, you can avoid the branded nonessentials and get real. But the best surprise is to consistently exceed their expectations in the results you deliver! – Kathleen Lucente, Red Fan Communications

15. Get To Know Them Outside Of Their Business

We understand that our clients are more than just their business, so we focus on other aspects of their life. During the onboarding process, we ask questions about their preferences for extracurricular activities and ideal places to go. Occasionally, we provide tickets to see their favorite artist or sporting event, or gift cards to their preferred restaurant. We want them to feel valued by us as people. – Leanna DeBellevue, DeBellevue Global Marketing Firm

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Author: Expert Panel®, Forbes Councils Member