Recently I did the Cape to Cape, a 4-day mountain bike stage race in the beautiful South West corner of Australia.
The event was super well organised, the atmosphere rocked, the routes and trails were sublime and the weather gods gave us fantastic conditions.
And also, there were a couple of things event organisers did that really stood out as delighters - they were simple, I imagine pretty low cost and packed a punch of value to the participant experience.
Firstly, at registration we got stickers for each day with the course profile you could put on your handlebars. This gave you a continual at-a-glance overview of where you were in the course and what climbs and descents were coming up. The course gpx files weren't published in advance for us to load into our bike computers because some of the routes went across private land. However this simple 'feature' made it easy to plan where to take on some nutrition and strategize your effort each day.
Secondly, at the end there were bike washing facilities! Brushes, hoses, detergent, a rack to hang the bike on while you washed it. Simple but gold. Everyone could go back to their accommodation, which likely wouldn't have those facilities, with clean bikes ready for the next day.
I've done many events over the years and have never seen these at an event before. Someone had clearly thought about what would be of real value to the riders.
When you're planning your next product release or project roadmap, it's worth thinking about what you might include to really 'delight' a customer by putting yourself in their shoes. It doesn't need to be complex or expensive and it could get them raving about the experience, just like me!