15 Ways to Set and Meet Customer Expectations
Setting and meeting customer expectations is a complicated, multi-step process that begins before the first contact, continues all through the customer relationship and, throughout, requires the commitment of everyone in the organization.
Aligning Strategy 1—Let Go, Listen and Hear I once took a handmade steel bicycle into the shop for routine maintenance. The mechanics never completed the maintenance, but they did damage the frame, badly. When I pointed out the damage, the owner got defensive and the mechanics averted their eyes. No one took responsibility. I never quite understood this reaction. They damaged my bike and tried to charge me for work they never finished. Whatever expectations I’d had, they weren’t for that. Conventional wisdom says we need to stop running from one desire to the next. Instead, we should reign in our expectations and enjoy what we have. That’s easy to say but hard to do. Humans are constantly setting expectations about everything—from how bad traffic will be on the drive home to where we see ourselves in five years. Conventional wisdom also says we can’t control another human being. When helping customers, it’s not about controlling—it’s about letting go, listening and actually hearing. When I pointed out the damage to my bike, the bike shop owner’s initial response was defensive: “It’s only cosmetic, it won’t affect performance.”
He didn’t hear me. I didn’t buy that bike just for the performance (steel can’t compare to carbon fiber for performance, it’s just really sweet to ride). I bought it because of the steel frame, beautifully hand-built and hand-painted in Italy. Now with four thumb-sized dents in the rosso red frame. 2—Create Culture from the Top Down Leadership sets the tone for culture. When Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer responds to customer complaints on social media, she sets a strong example for the rest of her company. This past week, Yahoo had a mail outage and Mayer published a blog post apologizing for the incident. “This has been a very frustrating week for our users and we are very sorry,” she wrote. “For many of us, Yahoo Mail is a lifeline to our friends, family members and customers. This week, we experienced a major outage that not only interrupted that connection but caused many of you a massive inconvenience—that’s unacceptable and it’s something we’re taking very seriously.” She took responsibility, apologized and even went on to explain what happened. “Unfortunately, the outage was much more complex than it seemed at first, which is why it’s taking us several days to resolve the compounding issues,” she wrote. “So what happened? At Monday, December 9th at 10:27 p.m. PT…” With one move, Mayer told every Yahoo customer that she cares about them and also every Yahoo employee that she cares about customer service and they should too. More than that, she’s showed employees how to do it. If you work at Yahoo, you now know what you have to do.
“It is about the decisions made in the boardroom,” says Jo Causon of the Institute of Customer Service. “Focusing your customer service strategy across the whole of the organization, how it relates to other parts of the organization…” When the bike shop owner dismissed my concerns about my frame, he made it okay for the mechanics to look away or wander off. 3—Walk in Your Customer’s Shoes Mayer also says that to really service the customer, we have to be users of our products and services. Virgin founder Richard Branson would agree. “When you are making a decision about how best to serve your customers,” Branson told Entrepreneur. “Your own experience is often a better guide than a more sophisticated analysis of the market.” If you haven’t used your own products or services in the same way a customer would, you don’t know what the customer experiences. If you don’t know what your customer experiences, you don’t know what they need. If you don’t know what they need, you can’t provide it to them. 4—Set Realistic Expectations, for Consistency Consistency requires realistic goals. For a company to meet its customers’ expectations, it has to set realistic ones. And deliver on them. “…And then not to just meet them but to exceed them—preferably in unexpected and helpful ways,” says Branson. “Setting customer expectations at a level that is aligned with consistently deliverable levels of customer service requires that your whole staff, from product development to marketing, works in harmony with your brand image.” Customer service guru Shep Hyken says we should talk to customer-facing employees to see what they’re promising customers.
“Does the customer service and experience meet and exceed [customer] expectations?” Hyken writes. “Is there perception of their experience [being] in line with what we want it to be?” If customers don’t view our company the way we want them to, we need to take steps to align those views. 5—Align Expectations with Reality Strategy has to align with actual interactions between employees and customers. To understand what’s happening, we have to talk with employees—particularly customerfacing employees. Hyken suggests internal surveys aimed at comparing how employees think customers view the company with how customers actually view the company in customer satisfaction surveys. “When your company’s perceptions of what your customers think of you align with the customers’ perceptions of what they actually think of you,” writes Hyken. “You have what I call customer congruency, and it is a major step toward meeting and exceeding your customers’ expectations.” To align strategy with reality, we also have to ensure that everyone from the CEO on down understands what the goals are and how to achieve them. Otherwise, different parts of the organization will be going in different directions. “Because when there is no alignment, chaos can ensue,” says Branson. “[For example,] in commercial aviation, the big, long-established carriers often still referred to as ‘full service’ airlines, set themselves up for failure by continuing to oversell their services, even though they ceased to provide great service long ago.” If prices aren’t aligned with service, customers notice.
“Their passengers have higher expectations than when they pay an identical fare for the same trip on a low-cost carrier,” Branson goes on. “Meanwhile, the low-cost carriers have done a very good job of setting expectations as they reinvent short-haul flying.” I’m not sure about the dynamics in the bike shop, but what I took away was that the owner didn’t care about me or my bike and, therefore, neither did the mechanics. (Alignment, ironically, although negative.) 6—Watch Competitors (Without Following Blindly) Whether we know it or not, our competitors are influencing our customers’ expectations. If we don’t at least pay attention to what they’re doing, we’re missing out. We shouldn’t follow them blindly, but we should at least pay attention to them. Customer experience expert Jeannie Walters of 360Connext says that ignoring our competition is foolish, that competitors are giving our customers a view of possibly greener grass on the other side of the fence. “Watching what your competition is doing is critical since the chatter about your services or products will be compared in these circles to the chatter about your competitor’s,” writes Walters. “Some negative reviews will be from customers who have never tried your products, but they believe what they hear from their trusted network.” Walters says that we’re social creatures who “listen to our peer networks more than ever about purchases and business relationships.” Given that, it makes sense to follow our competitors so we know what they’re doing in customer service and what their consumers think about it. Otherwise, we don’t have a complete picture of the marketplace. Besides, our competitors are probably watching us, anyway, so we’re giving them an advantage by not watching back.
Interactions with Customers
7—Hire Natural Helpers Some people are natural helpers, others aren’t. Whether they get it from upbringing or genes, natural helpers don’t need to be trained to provide good service—so those are the people we should hire for customer service. Zappos has unique hiring practices that include evaluating hard and soft skills equally and even providing an opt-out offer for new hires that aren’t a good fit after all. According to Businessweek, Zappos puts employees through “an intensive four-week training program, immersing them in the company’s culture, strategy and processes.” If it doesn’t look like a good fit, the company offers them back pay plus a $2,000 bonus to quit. Only 2% to 3% of new hires given The Offer actually take it, according to Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, which says a lot about Zappos’ appeal. At least 97% of people told they’re not a good fit decide to stay anyway. In 2010, Hsieh told Business Insider he figured Zappos had lost “well over $100 million” from bad hires and the subsequent domino effect of more bad hires. However, if employees are natural helpers and have a clear understanding of the organization’s customer service goals, we shouldn’t have to guide their every single move to prevent bad decisions. “Rather than providing rules or scripts, you should ask [employees] to treat the customer as they themselves would like to be treated, which is surely the highest standard,” says Richard Branson. By giving employees independence to creatively solve solutions, we can ensure that their efforts are results-driven—they want to find a way to help the customer, and we’ve given them the ability to do that.
“It is about having emotional intelligence skills, better dialogue communication, empathy and connecting with the customers,” says Jo Causon. “Combined with commercial acumen and understanding how we can use technology.” It’s hard for me to tell whether the mechanics at the bike shop were natural helpers or not—they kind of just slunk away when I was there, but they might have been trying to get away from the shop owner. I have no such questions about the shop owner. 8—Set Expectations Before the First Sales Interaction If we don’t set customer expectations before a sales interaction takes place, our customers will set them for us. In fact, they’ll likely come to the interaction with expectations already formed. We have to be there to help form them. We’re all online shoppers these days—whatever it is we’re looking for, we look for it online. It’s where we can get the best deals, and where we can find out anything about anything. Our savvy customers are just like us, and they come to us with expectations based on their research. They’ve checked out our website, which had better be easy-to-use, informative and responsive to accommodate mobile devices. They’ve looked at our user forum, which should have many users and exhaustive content. They’ve also read online user reviews and asked their friends about us. We have a bit of control over the website and user forum, so we can set expectations through them as well as through whatever early communications we have (email, text, phone call, social media chat, et cetera). Although we can’t govern what people say about us on social media, we can take part in the conversations and perhaps influence them. (More on that later.)
I didn’t have the advantage of chat rooms to vet the bike shop (this was pre-social media)—I’d been to the shop a few times and thought they knew what they were doing. They took the bike without comment. We could have saved some trouble right there if the mechanics had reacted in some way to the bike or if I’d asked them if they’d ever worked on an Italian frame before. Neither happened. My fault, too. I wasn’t as savvy a customer as I am now (as we all are now). 9—Be Empathetic, Honest and Transparent Once a sales or other interaction begins, we have to remember that it’s a relationship like any other. All the same cornerstones for a good relationship—honesty, empathy, transparency, trust—still apply. At the beginning, we can set specific expectations about what we provide and what we don’t provide—so customers know exactly what products and services they can expect from us. These specifics may be more detailed than what customers can find in online research, unless we’ve been proactive and listed them online in an answer to a chat question or something. (More on that later). It’s important to be transparent when we talk about what we do and don’t provide, so our customers don’t have any surprises down the road. Expectations govern reactions. “I find that I am often more disappointed by expensive goods and services than I am by lower-priced ones,” says Richard Branson. “Because my expectations are often overinflated when I pay a high price, but I have few expectations when I pay a low price.” If you handle basic support free-of-charge, your customers should know that. If you charge for more advanced support, your customers should know that. By the time they
call, the customer is already frustrated by whatever issue they’re having—they don’t need surprises, of any kind. If a conflict arises and emotions come into play, we can diffuse the emotions by being empathetic and transparent, while remaining calm and professional. If a customer wants extra support but isn’t paying for it, we can explain that to them. And we can say no if we have to—something that goes against the old axiom that the customer is always right but something that can actually help establish trust in a relationship. The Dunvegan Group’s Anne Miner says a disconnect can exist between a company’s strategy and how customer-facing employees are implementing the strategy in interactions with customers. “Has your company committed to ‘exceeding customer expectations’?” she says. “Or promised you will do ‘anything’ to satisfy your customers? Are your front line, customerfacing employees clear on what that means?” According to customer loyalty expert Myra Golden, we can say no to customers and they’ll be okay with it. If we demonstrate that we understand their inconvenience (empathy), explain what’s happening (transparency) and tell them what we can do about it (action). Obviously, none of that happened when I picked up my bike. All I got was, “It’s only cosmetic, it won’t affect performance.” I was mostly in shock—at the bike and at the owner’s defensive reaction. (It was mybike and not his that was damaged, right?) But this conflict began before I came back for the bike. It began when the mechanics mistakenly torqued a bolt in the wrong direction while trying to get a part off. (Italian cranks are threaded into the frame in the opposite direction as English.)
I’ve removed cranks a lot myself and know exactly what they did: they yanked on it for a while with a long-handled wrench, then they added a cheater bar extension to the wrench and yanked some more. One guy tried it, then another. And so on. Finally they gave up, and when they took the frame out of the stand they saw that the clamps holding it in the stand had bent the frame in—four thumb-sized indentations— because they’d yanked so hard. Then they called me to say the bike was ‘ready.’ That’s it: not ‘damaged’ or ‘unfinished,’ just ‘ready.’ According to customer service expert Jeff Toister, we have to manage expectations even when we can’t address the issue yet. “Customers expect a rapid response, but they’re often very forgiving if they know up front it can take a little longer than normal,” says Toister. “When things get busy, set up an automatic response to incoming email or send a quick note to let people know when you’ll get back to the them.” The bike guys could have contacted me at any point during the proceedings: to let me know there might be a problem, to ask about Italian cranks, to ask if they can yank like crazy on my bike… But they didn’t even tell me the work was unfinished, let alone anything else. I wanted them to treat the inside of the frame with rust-proofing, which they couldn’t do with the cranks still on. (They didn’t tell me the work wasn’t done, I had to ask.) I suppose they just hoped I wouldn’t notice. But had they stepped into my shoes at all, they would have realized I was a discerning bike purchaser and, of course, I would notice. They also tried to charge me for the unfinished work, which I really didn’t understand. The owner eventually caved on that and didn’t charge me…again, for work that was never done.
10—Provide Tutorials on Products, Services There’s no faster way to learn what a product or service can and can’t do than a tutorial. Whether it’s one-on-one or via webinar or YouTube video, a tutorial helps customers understand exactly what they’re getting. Tutorials can live on our websites behind prominent buttons. We can link to them in emails, blog posts, tweets and on every other communication channel. We can be proactive and put them out there so our customers don’t have to search for them. 11—Follow Up We have more ways to stay in touch with our customers after an interaction than ever before. And follow-ups are great opportunities to start conversations and get feedback. High-touch service anticipates customer needs before they arise. It also keeps the organization in the forefront of the customer’s mind, hopefully in a pleasant way (i.e., don’t be spammy or annoying with follow-ups). If you’ve gotten any happy birthday or follow-up emails from places where you’ve shopped, you know what I’m talking about. It can be anything: “Happy Birthday.” “How did you like your purchase?” “Thanks for shopping with us, here’s a 20% off discount code for no reason…” “Anything we can do better?” As an example, Rite Aid’s automated voice system identifies me quickly, puts my most common requests early in the call menu and calls me when my prescription is ready. The follow-up is high-touch, and I appreciate it. If Rite Aid’s IVR called me for a customer satisfaction survey, I’d probably take it. Because I think someone would listen to and possibly use my feedback. Whether it’s IVR, email or a discussion on Twitter or other social media, follow-ups provide high-touch service that people appreciate and remember.
Getting Feedback 12—Join the Conversation If you were at a party and someone in another room was talking about your business, wouldn’t you want to be in there too? How else could you learn what people think about your company, accept constructive criticism, clarify misconceptions or positively influence how people think about your company? There’s a discussion going on somewhere right now about us, always. Social media has transformed how customers research organizations, interact with them, lodge complaints, et cetera. If Marissa Meyer can find time to be on social media, so can we. And we have to be, because that’s where the discussion is happening. It doesn’t take place on our premises or within our immediate reach as much anymore; we have to go out and seek it. And we have to do that on all channels. “Customers will often contact a company via multiple channels if one channel is unresponsive,” writes Jeff Toister. “For instance, they might tweet about their problem if they don’t get a quick response to an email. You can avoid this by making sure you monitor all of your customer service channels on a regular basis.” Joining the conversation on social media and forums is the only way we can proactively influence the flow of information about us. Through social media and other communication channels like email, IVR or forums, we can put our best foot forward before a prospective customer even contacts us. If I’m looking at two different companies, and one is on social media tweeting and sharing informative, educational and helpful blog posts, tips, tutorials, et cetera and the other company isn’t doing any of that…I’m looking at the social company first. Because, at first blush anyway, it appears that the social company is a more customer-centric company.
13—Make Complaining Easy With so many ways for our customers to talk to us, complaining should be very easy for them. And wewant it to be because that’s how we learn about our shortcomings so we can overcome them. You know those cards on restaurants tables? You know those 1-800 numbers on shipping packages? You know those signs on the back of 18-wheelers that say: “How is my driving?” Those still apply. But now we have websites, blogs, user forums, social media, emails, outbound IVR, et cetera. We have innumerable touch points, and all those touch points should provide easy avenues for complaining (i.e., giving feedback). We can put feedback buttons on prominent pages on our website, or every page. We can encourage comments on our blog posts. We can answer questions on our user forums, join third-party forums and comment there. We can send emails asking for feedback. We can do outbound IVR surveys. It’s about engagement. We want to engage our customers at every touch point, and make it easy for them to engage with us back. 14—Actually Use the Feedback “Isn’t asking for someone’s opinion and then not doing anything substantial with it or not telling them what you are going to do following their input tantamount to not asking at all?” says customer service expert Adrian Swinscoe. “Follow up and follow through seems to be where there is a real issue.” In other words, there’s no point in collecting feedback if we don’t use it. “To establish and maintain a healthy flow, customer feedback must result in change your customers can see,” Whitney Wood of the Phelon Group told Inc. magazine. “Change is the most powerful currency to reward vocal and consultative customers.”
15—Follow Up on Feedback We all want to feel empowered, and the way to feel empowered is to see something we’ve done affect change. To see something we’ve done disappear into a fog forever is defeating, not empowering. Following up on customer feedback lets customers know that we heard them. At the very least, we have to thank them and acknowledge that their participation is important to us. Even if their feedback isn’t going to lead to a change, we can at least tell them we’re factoring it into what we’re doing—it lets them know we value their opinion. If their feedback does lead to a change, telling them we are or will be acting on their feedback empowers them. It also assures them that we’re receptive and reactive to customer concerns, and we’ll address any issues or concerns that come up in the future.
A Frame Dented, A Bike Shop Closed In the end, I still have that Italian bike, still with the four dents in the rosso red frame. (The bike mechanics cranked the bolt down so hard that it’s stripped and I can’t get the cranks off, probably ever. I have a carbon bike now, so I don’t ride the steel one as much; hopefully the cranks will last.) Needless to say, I haven’t gone back to that bike shop. Also, I’ve remembered all the lessons I learned from the experience and reminded myself about them repeatedly over the years. (Let’s just say I do most of my own mechanic work now, I vet shops thoroughly before I take a bike to one and I ask questions before I hand any bike over.) I’m wiser for the experience, anyway. Sometimes I wonder if the shop owner is. It’s hard to tell…the shop went out of business a couple years ago.