Expectations are funny things.  In many cases jokes depend on coming up with something unexpected as the punch line to get laughs.  For example, when President Reagan started collecting Russian jokes recently, one supplied by his writers was :  ‘What are the four things wrong with Soviet agriculture?’  The answer : ‘Spring, summer, autumn and winter!’   Another one went : ‘What’s the definition of a communist?  Someone who has read the works of Marx and Lenin.  What’s the definition of an Anti- communist?  Someone who understands  the works of Marx and Lenin!’

Mismatch of expectations can be funny when dealing with jokes but when dealing with customers expectations mismatch is not funny at all.  Customers don’t tell you when you fail to meet their expectations, they just don’t come back.  Companies everywhere are trying to find that edge which will help them deal with their customers better and set them off from their competitors.  But there’s only one sure way  –  and that’s constantly to meet or beat the customer’s expectations.   It’s as simple and straightforward as that.

An illustration will help to show just how expectations work.  A large and nationally-known engineering company budgeted around a 9% increase in managers’ salaries in 1988, figuring this would well cover their expectations and more than match ‘the going rate’.  In normal circumstances this would have been perfectly acceptable and kept managers thinking positively.  However, the Company had recently introduced a bonus scheme for shop floor workers a few months earlier which had worked so well that wages soared within two months by 20% or more.  Management could hardly complain as they were achieving productivity gains of around 30%, but it became clear the budget figure which had looked generous when composing the annual budget now looked suddenly inadequate.

There is in fact no absolute figure with which all employees will be happy.  It all depends on what their expectations were before the event.  The rule is actually very simple : where events fall short of expectations, unhappiness will result.  Happiness only results where events actually meet or exceed expectations.  The degree to which expectations are exceeded will show in the degree of delight which follows.  And, as it is with employees, so it is with customers.

There is only one way to guarantee  customer satisfaction and that is to meet or beat their expectations.  When you do that, they will keep coming back for more and act as walking adverts for you by talking to their friends.  Where you fail to meet their expectations they will equally talk to their friends  –  only this time the news won’t be so good.  And one thing’s for sure :  they may tell four or five people about the good service you gave them, but they’ll tell twenty or more about your failures. 

The customer-conscious company cannot but be interested in their customers’ expectations  –  their reputation stands or falls on how they match up against them.  The concept of expectation theory has been known for some time, but only now is it being applied to customer management.  The reason for its growing popularity is that despite its simplicity the concept has within it a number of features which make it the ideal training vehicle with which to imbue employees from top to bottom with customer satisfaction zeal.  Here are the features which make Beating Customer Expectations so powerful.

1. First and foremost, you see things from the customer’s standpoint.

Before you can even start beating the customer’s expectations you have to know what the customer’s expectations are.  To do this you are forced to stand in the customer’s shoes.  Many customer service programmes talk about ‘customer focus’ or ‘customer awareness’, but in these positions you are looking from your  side of the desk.  In defining the expectations of the customer you have to jump the counter onto his  side.  That makes you talk in the first rather than in the third person.  You no longer talk about what he  wants but about what I  want.  That makes a lot of difference.  You find yourself asking : What am I expecting of this company in terms of service, and what am I actually getting ?  What visible signals do I see that they really deliver superior service?

You see things differently when you are a customer rather than an employee.  The customer judges you on the service he got the last time he dealt with you, or the last time he had a complaint.  No matter what the Managing Director says is his company’s commitment to service, or what high-sounding mission statements are pinned on the wall, if it’s not getting through to first-line employees then the customer judges you on the service he actually gets.  That’s all he sees.  The service he actually gets will either make him come back or stay away.

One of the big banks has made great play of its commitment to excellence in customer service but it’s the little things that irritate.  Recently a customer holidaying in Scotland visited a branch to draw some cash.  Having stood in a short queue she was told that it would cost one pound to draw £30 in cash over the counter but if she went round the corner to the bank’s Autoteller machine she could have the same amount of cash at no charge!   Whatever the good reasons from the bank’s point of view that this is justifiable, such episodes simply serve to convince the customer that the integrity of the bank’s internal systems are more important than customer convenience.  Front-line employees start from square minus one in keeping customers happy when such apparently petty irritations are already built into the system.

Since customer satisfaction has to start with their present expectations it becomes imperative to find out what their expectations really are.  That is why a properly conducted customer survey giving hard and quantified data is so much better than guessing.  Guessing implies you are still standing on your side of the counter.   What we need to know is what they  actually think.  Survey data gives you something of substance to work on, and when you have introduced changes and let them run you can then make comparisons with the next survey to see how it all looks from the customers’ side.  Managers who avoid asking the customers their views because ‘surveys may become a rod for our own backs’ are simply saying they prefer not to know.  But service starts with customers and ends with customers.  If you are serious about it you have to know.

2. Customer service is personal, not absolute.

There is no absolute standard of excellent service.  Your service is only excellent if the customer says so.  He is the sole judge.  You might be no worse than the competition, or even better than some, but if your service does not come up to the customer’s personal expectations, he will still judge you as unsatisfactory. 

When a navvy goes into a local shop, cursory service may be all he requires providing he gets his fags and his bottle of pop.  When the lady of the manor enters, however, she will be disappointed if she does not get some recognition and some personal attention.  Similarly the pensioner may treat her visit as a bit of a social occasion and appreciate a personal chat with her shopping.  Considering customers’ individual expectations forces you into considering them as persons  and not simply as so many shopping units.  The same standard of service for all may be all you are prepared to provide but customer satisfaction means dealing with the person in front of you as an individual, and they all have different needs, preferences and requirements.

The Disney people at their massive theme parks have long recognised that all their ‘Guests’ are individuals and ask thousands of different questions about the business :  like how many bricks are there in the castle, how much did it cost to build the park, how many hamburgers do you serve in a day, how many lights are there in the park, etc. etc.  The ‘hosts’ don’t just look sheepish and mumble something like “a whole lot!”.  If they don’t know they find out  –  right away.  Round the clock there are staff at a central exchange armed with great fact books just waiting to answer such outlandish questions.  The host can pick up a ‘phone anywhere around the park and get an authentic and immediate answer for the Guest.  Satisfaction for the visitor is priority number one.  Visitors often report that their highest expectations were vastly exceeded.  At Disney beating the customers’ expectations has long been a way of life.

Customers’ expectations arise from a whole variety of sources.  Their normal way of life will have a big bearing on the standards they are prepared to accept.

For example, if they are used to eating in French restaurants, then a MacDonald’s meal may not appeal at all.  Their previous dealings with you   will also shape their expectations.  Comparisons with others in the same business will also colour their view of you.  For example, if the competition introduce some desirable innovation, suddenly your service which appeared quite adequate yesterday becomes inferior today.  And of course your own advertising will create expectations, and if your staff are not fully geared up to deliver on your promises, you risk shooting yourself in the foot.

I recently received an invitation a few months ago to apply for a Gold Card from one of the big banks.  I had always refused before as my Access card seems perfectly adequate and entails no annual subscription fee whereas the Gold Card does.  This time as a special deal there was to be no joining fee, so I decided to try it. 

The rather up-market sales literature gave a specific number which could be rung to get detailed information on anything to do with the card.  As it happened I did have some questions so I rang the number.  “I have some questions  about the Gold Card, can you help me?” I started.  “The Gold Card?” said the girl on the end.  “Yes, it says on your literature here that if I have any queries I should ring this number.”  The noises behind sounded like an ordinary bank and I heard the girl whisper apprehensively :“It’s somebody asking about the Gold Card!”  If this was the number to ring, nobody had told her about it.  Soon a gentleman came on the ‘phone and asked if he could help.  “Could he confirm that any unpaid portion of a monthly bill would only be charged at two and a half percent above the bank rate ?”  “If that is what the booklet says, that must be right.”   A few more complex questions produced short delays while verification was sought. 

If you are going to launch an up-market service for up-market clients you need to be ready to give up-market service.  Glossy literature followed by unglossy service simply gets you the reputation for talking better then you deliver.  Don’t create expectations in the mind of the customer which you cannot then meet  –  that guarantees  disappointment.  Despite this obvious truth companies repeatedly fall into the trap of allowing their marketing people to issue product and service promises which they are not ready, not trained or not capable to deliver.  You only need to do this several times and your reputation soon takes a bit of retrieving.  Only raise expectations in the mind of your customers which you can meet and beat if you want to really impress them.

3. Customer expectations change.

If you think of the Olympic Games it is clear that for the most part the performances that won gold medals last time may not be good enough to beat the competition this time.  So it is with customers.  If you deliver what you gave them last year the best you will do is to meet  their expectations.  To beat  their expectations you will have to go one better.  If you don’t, the competition will.

Taking goods you had just bought back to the shop and expecting to get your money back was not at all commonplace a decade or two ago.  But Marks and Spencer changed all that.  Their no-quibble money-back undertaking is one of the foundations of their reliability and success.  Nowadays getting a refund on goods you return as unsuitable has become standard practice.

For a long time getting your parcel delivered safely or speedily by the Post Office was a pretty unreliable business.  When TNT and others started offering guaranteed next day delivery of packages throughout the country they carved a great piece out of the Post Office market.  Soon the Post Office were offering a “me too” service with Datapost and paying for television advertising as well to get some of their business back.  Now there is a host of such delivery services and people like National Freight and ANC are majoring on such seductive factors as common courtesy, consideration and personal concern to expand their business.  The competition gets tougher all the time.  The customers love it of course, but there expectations keep rising.  This year’s service will need to be even better next year.

4. Expectations recognises the ‘feeling’ content of pleasing customers.

As we have indicated customers all have different needs and expectations which are personal to them.  They may be looking for courtesy, efficiency, speed, reliability, expert advice or just plain understanding.  But they all want to find in their way that dealing with you is a pleasant experience.  Some trainers in the customer service business actually advise their protégés to hand their customers “warm fuzzies”  –  in other words to make their dealings with the customer into warm and pleasant experiences (like it was with his teddy bear).  However odd this may sound it has strong psychological justification in practice.   Pleasant experiences in dealing with you create strong associations in the mind of the customer and these associations are quite powerful in making him want to repeat the transaction.

On the other hand in handling the customer one wants to avoid unpleasant experiences.  The trainers colourfully call these “cold pricklies” or “wet crinklies”.  These are the irritations, annoyances and upsets that make the customer stay away or shop elsewhere.  The words may seem funny, but they have two particular advantages  –  they describe the way customers sometimes feel and they are easy to remember. The associations your customers have in their mind about you are the expectations you have created.  If these associations are overwhelmingly positive you only need to keep meeting their expectations to keep them coming back.