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Amazon delighted me last week.

I’ll repeat that: Amazon delighted me.

I want to say it a third time. And a fourth and fifth. Delight is such a rare occurrence, it’s worth embracing  when it pops into your life.

Amazon delighted me.

It was such a simple act – that was part of its power. And the fact that it was wholly unexpected. Actually, it was the surprise that caused the delight.

At the start of the year, I decided to take a break from book-buying. My shelves and my bank balance needed  a rest from my (rather virtuous) addiction, and I wanted to see how long I could go without indulging.

(I’m still going cold turkey, hence the dramatic falls in share price across the publishing sector).

But I devised a sneaky way around this literary Lent by pre-ordering a number of titles at the start of the year. So when they arrived I wouldn’t strictly be buying books, but I still get the frisson of a new title.

I’m not particularly proud of this strategy, but it’s important to the story, so there we are.

A couple of books turned up in February, one at the beginning of March. Then a dry spell until last week when, true to form, Amazon sent me an email to say that the next shipment was on its way.

Except this time it added that demand for the particular book had been so great that they had negotiated a lower price with the publisher, which it was passing onto me.

The saving was just £1. But that’s not really the point.

They passed it on to me.

Had Amazon got it for a better price and not told me, I doubt I’d ever have known. But they choose to tell me, and share in the gain.

A cynic might say that their systems forced them to because the accounting involved would be too complicated. Or that other customers would have noticed the difference on the site and complained, and that the ensuing admin would have been more trouble than it was worth.

There are multiple reasons why this may have happened.

I don’t care.

All that matters to me is that an online retailer with whom I have always had a rather distant, commodity-based relationship changed the game. Suddenly, it revealed a personality to me. It showed a set of values and what it believes to be right.

And I went from a loyal customer to a passionate fan. Hence I’m writing about them today. And once I’m off my fiction fast, there’s no prizes for guessing where my first spend will be. And all subsequent spends.

That customer-to-fan transformation is one of the hardest acts in business. Achieve it, and you have a relationship for life.

And the key is quite simple: share good fortune.

That works because no-one expects us to. There is no legal,  moral or commercial imperative to do so. If we don’t, no-one will think any the worse of us. That’s business-as-usual.

But go beyond those normal boundaries, and the smallest act can leave the greatest impression.

Even the saving of £1.

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