Managing expectations is oh so critical in customer service

If you phone somebody and the voice mail message says this person "will call you back as soon as possible", do you know what to expect? How do you feel? Confident and assured that you will be looked after all right? Let me guess now…

Reliability is one of the most important drivers of customer satisfaction and as such an underpinning of customer loyalty. A long, long time ago we found out about this when the so called ServQual model was developed by two profs at Texas A&M University.

Doesn't it feel good when you know exactly where you stand and what will happen next? For me a great example is always Amazon.com. At each and every step of their purchase and fulfillment process they communicate with you. This is a prime example of how to do things right. In Canada we have a competitor to Amazon, called Indigo. They recently informed a friend of mine that her books had been shipped two days after she received them! Ouch… bad Moment of Truth… a real 'coffee stain'. If you try to copy the big boys, you better know that you are doing it right all the time. These service anti dotes make great anecdotes and typically get told to ten other people or more.

When I work with my clients during my Customer Experience Workshop to help them manage the dickens out of each and every Moment of Truth, I always impress on them how much better it is to openly face the music. The moment you know that something will not go as planned or expected by the customer, start communicating. The golden theme here is Managing Expectations. You are much better off letting the customer know early of a deviation than to wait until things have gone wrong and the customer starts phoning. People however are naturally hesitant to do this. They must be coached to understand that facing the music early and proactively in the end is less costly and less painful than the opposite.

I don't know about you, but if more people and organizations thought more consciously about Managing Expectations in managing customer relations, customer service delivery and even social interaction life would be more comforting.
A pipe dream?



What say you? Comments? Ideas?


Eric Fraterman