Delight Playbook
Remove the work your customers do to deal with you, make one thing they talk about happen every time, and know in gross profit what keeping a customer is worth.
4 rungs, climbed in order. Each one is wasted if the one below it is broken.
What’s Inside
Every part of it is in your library with The Standard.
The Problem
Most delight advice starts with the gift. But customers rarely leave because you forgot a card. They leave because they had to chase you, repeat themselves, or wonder whether anyone was coming.
A gift on top of hassle reads as decoration. The same gift on top of an easy experience reads as care. So the order of work matters more than the gift.
The Delight Ladder
4 rungs. You climb them in order.
- Keep the floor. Write the 5 promises every customer gets, check them against your last 10 jobs, and repair misses with a 4-step recovery script before any gesture.
- Remove the work. Count the contacts customers should never have needed to make, price them, and run the Three-Task Effort Test to find and fix the biggest avoidable step.
- One thing they talk about. Score candidates on 4 pass-or-fail requirements, then run a 30-day pilot with a stop rule you write before you start.
- The personal gesture. A small monthly allowance, a rule for who can spend it without asking, and the arithmetic that says how many extra repeat jobs a gesture must cause to pay for itself.
The Tools
- The Three-Task Effort Test, with a printable run sheet and an effort log
- The floor checklist, a broken-promise log and the recovery script
- The talk-trigger scorer and 30-day pilot, with the unprompted question and a written stop rule
- 8 message templates, from the handwritten card to the recovery follow-up
- The retention-point worksheet: what one kept customer and 1 point of repeat rate are worth in gross profit, and the break-even for any gesture
- A monthly tracker with a guess row, a baseline row and 30 and 90 day look-backs. No targets: your first count is your baseline
Chapters
- The 15-Minute Quick Win
- Why Good Service Does Not Bring People Back
- Rung 1, Keep the Floor
- Rung 2, Remove the Work
- Rung 3, One Thing They Talk About
- Rung 4, The Personal Gesture
- The Arithmetic
Plus 2 worked decisions and 1 that went wrong, a 30-day sprint, metrics, common mistakes and the 30 and 90 day look-backs.
From Chapter 1
Pick the 5 customers who have been with you longest. Before you contact anyone, write down what you think each one would say to this question. Then text it, one at a time, from your own phone:
“What is the one thing about working with us you’d mention to a friend? One line is plenty.”
No discount. No review link. When the replies land, put each one under your guess. If 2 people name the same thing, you may already have the start of something customers talk about. If your guesses missed, you have learned that your sense of the business and the business itself are 2 different things.
Do one thing today: Write your 5 guesses, then send the question to those 5 customers. It takes 15 minutes, costs nothing, and gives you your first baseline.
Who This Is For
The owner of a small service business with customers who could come back or stay (a pool service, a plumber, an HVAC shop, a cleaning company, a landscaper, a salon, an auto shop) who has thought about cards and gifts but has never checked whether the basics are kept or what customers have to chase.
Questions
Is this a list of gift ideas?
No. Gifts are the last rung, and they come with a budget and a break-even test. Most of the book is about keeping promises and removing the work customers do to deal with you.
Will it tell me what my repeat rate should be?
No. There are no targets and no benchmarks in it. You count your own numbers before you change anything, then compare at 30 and 90 days.
Does it cover onboarding new customers, loyalty programs or referrals?
No. The first 30 days after someone pays you is in Client Onboarding Sequences. Rewards and membership are in Loyalty Program Design. Asking for introductions is in Referral Ask Kit.
Read it in your library.
This is included with The Standard, along with every other guide in the library. Your monthly re-audit tells you which one to open next. $497 to start, $297/mo to keep it running. Cancel any month and keep everything.
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