Why You Want to Train Your Employees to Surprise & Delight Your Customers
Opportunity to Differentiate
According to a Gallup Survey, 49% of Americans say customer service has gotten worse in the last year. Only 6% say it has improved.
*CSRevolution Podcast Episode 236: How Can I Make Customer Experience A True Competitive Advantage In 2026?
This Week’s Customer Experience Microlearning
Watch and share this amazing 1-minute service recovery story with your team.
CX + AI
In 2025, Lowe’s introduced Mylow, a virtual home improvement assistant developed with OpenAI, which provides expert guidance directly to customers. Designed to give users clear, step-by-step instructions for DIY projects, spark design ideas, and help find the right products, Mylow acts like a knowledgeable Lowe’s associate in your pocket.
According to CEO Marvin Ellison, Lowe’s AI assistants — including Mylow and its in-store counterpart, Mylow Companion — now handle nearly 1 million customer questions each month, from product details to project help and order status.
*Related – The Experience Revolution Livestream Quarterly Workshops
Why You Want to Train Your Employees to Surprise & Delight Your Customers
Think about the last time you made someone’s day. It could have been something so simple, but clearly a surprising wow moment for the other person that left a positive impression on them. Yet, at the end of the day, who feels the best? The day maker does.
That is what the top world-class experience brands do: They build, encourage, recognize, and give the resources that allow their employees to constantly go above and beyond, which is why they end up having significantly higher employee fulfillment.
*Related – 5 Steps To Creating An Organization Obsessed With Going Above And Beyond
We like to call it the day maker dopamine, which refers to a phenomenon often discussed in psychology and neuroscience. Engaging in acts of kindness or altruism can lead to a release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward.
This effect has been referred to as a “helper’s high” and has been studied in the context of why people feel good when they help others. The idea is that engaging in altruistic behavior activates the reward centers in the brain, leading to the release of dopamine, which in turn creates a feeling of pleasure or satisfaction.
How to Wow
The ability to go above and beyond for customers and coworkers allows your employees to put their fingerprint on the experience. This fosters creative autonomy, allowing employees to come up with their own ideas, to think creatively, to exercise their
brains in a new way, giving them a sense of ownership in the experiences they provide. Employees are more connected to the experience they are providing when they feel they have a hand in creating it. Leaders need to make employees feel safe to always do the right thing.
Best of all, employees who perform an act of kindness experience an increase in oxytocin, the chemical that makes us feel warm and fuzzy. Oxytocin is released even when you hear a story of generosity or witness one. The feeling makes us want to be more generous. That is why storytelling and sharing all the great things your team members do for customers, and for each other, is so important.
Organizations achieve greatness when employees are allowed to do unexpected acts, show initiative, exhibit creativity, and step outside the norm. That is when delightful, interesting, and amazing results occur.
Great experiences don’t happen by accident.
Schedule a complimentary call to discuss how we help organizations train teams to consistently exceed expectations.
