If you’re a music fan like me, this article’s title will immediately make you think of what’s widely considered the first rap record to “go mainstream”. “Rapper’s Delight” was a UK Number 3 in December 1979 and a US Top 40 hit in early 1980 for the Sugarhill Gang.
But that’s not what I’m writing about today.
Today it’s all about rappers bringing delight to their audience. And the way one rapper in particular does it.
I recently read Glenn Fisher’s excellent book “The Art of the Click” (which I’d highly recommend).
Glenn tells the story of going to a Drake concert and the way Drake engaged his audience.
There’s not enough space for me to do Glenn’s story justice here. You need to buy his book for that.
But there’s a really important lesson for every business in the concert experience Glenn describes.
And it’s this…
If you really want to delight your customers, you have to work with them. You have to involve them in the process. You have to make them feel what you’re doing is for them You have to make an impact on them as individuals.
Too often, groups of managers get together in windowless conference rooms without a customer in sight and set out to deliver “customer delight”, or some such nonsense expression.
Take it from me. You’ll never deliver customer delight that way. Often the outcome of those meetings cheese customers off more than it makes them happy, in my experience.
For delight…the sort of reaction you hope will inspire years of loyalty from your customer base…you have to connect with your customers in ways most businesses don’t.
And while there are some challenges to doing this, it’s not nearly as hard as you’d think.
Delight depends on your mindset. It’s all about how you make deep connections with individual customers. And, unless your organisation is currently in a state of utter disorganisation, it’s rarely about introducing new procedures or buying a new CRM system (despite what business consultants and CRM system vendors would have you believe).
If the top-selling male solo artist of all time can make those sorts of connections with people they’ve never met and create delight for their gazillions of fans in the way Glenn describes, I’m absolutely certain you can do the same or better with your dozens or hundreds or thousands of customers.
You might not become a multi-platinum recording artist, but you’ll certainly run the most successful business in your sector.
And you don’t need to be a rapper for that to bring delight to your balance sheet.