Customer delight is dead.

No. It is not.

But due to the sunk-cost fallacy, delight won’t disappear quickly.

I think this article is a template for any number of industry bad habits we would like to see ended by the pandemic - forcing people to commute to offices, excessive numbers of meetings, services like Uber and AirBnB that frequently specialize in selling stripped down versions of their traditional counter parts, etc.

They all have in common what this article describes - it's easier to go after "delight", "socializing", or price points then to boost core value.

And let's be fair sometimes delight, socializing or price points do sell. Slack beat IRC purely on excitement over its UI. Lower prices do sell, particularly in the short term, before consumers become aware of what they are missing. And there are still a good number of people pining to return to the office even if it means forcing along everyone else who doesn't want to socialize the entire work day.

These aren't issues that will be resolved by the pandemic alone - they've just been thrown into greater visibility.