Think back to the last time you called your telecom service provider company or when you visited your automobile repair company or filed an application for something at your local municipal’s office or your last meal at a restaurant. Maybe when you boarded a plane for a trip or in general, purchased a good or procured a service that was of interest to you. You probably remember how the experience felt when you were done.
How was it? Did you like the experience? Did you hate it? What did you think of the company that provided it? Did you wish there were better alternatives? If you were to do it over again with all the fitting conditions, will you procure the service or purchase the good from the same company or provider?
Deliver Or Risk Dying
Business focus today has shifted away from just selling products and services to delivering a great overall customer experience. Most customers know more about a product or service in terms of strengths, weaknesses, seller’s costs, historical performances, competitors that could provide similar product or service.
Thanks to technology and related advancement in our informed society, a typical customer could easily do his/her homework as regards a provider of service or product. Yes, customers are now in the top of the business pyramid, in the driver’s seat of business continuity and center core of business strategy.
A typical customer expects more than is demanded – a wholesome experience targeted towards expectation. Simply deliver or risk dying.
Summarized Equation Of Customer Experience
Customer Expectation = Total perceived benefits promise … (Eq. i.)
Customer Observed Performance = Actual delivered outcomes … (Eq. ii.)
Customer Experience = Observed Performance – Customer Expectation
Customer experience is the observed performance that the customer has with the product or service provider (company) MINUS the customer expectation (total perceived benefits promised).
Customer Expectation
Think back again about the major purchases you have made recently, the information put out by companies or businesses in the media, from salespeople, advertising, personal research, recommendations from friends and colleagues, or based on your interaction with the product or service. This information, directly and indirectly, influences our expectations as customers in terms of:
- Perceived value,
- Quality,
- Evaluative metrics ( the ability of the product/service to meeting our needs).
In general, we (customers) hold 2 major types of expectations, explicit & implicit expectations.
- Explicit Customer Expectation: This is a clear and obvious perceived target for product performance and identifiable performance standards. For example, if a mobile phone battery had been stated to last 15 hours of battery time in use, your expectation for such product would be the exact 15 hours of battery time. A deviation in actual observed performance will be a shortfall. i.e. the product actually delivering 3 hours of battery time.
- Implicit Customer Expectation: Refers to the established performance norms. i.e. industrial standards.For example, if most mobile phone batteries in the industry deliver 15 hours of battery time, an expectation would be made by the customer regarding any particular mobile phone battery in comparison to the industry standard.
Parasuraman, Berry, and Zeithaml conducted a research study across 16 focus groups with customers in six service sectors and published in the MIT Sloan Management Review, found these key insights as I have summarized below:
Every customer have a perceived expectation
Customers expect business or companies to exceed expectations
The desired level of service is what the customer hopes to obtain
Sufficient level of service is what the customer deem acceptable
Customers want to be “relationship customers”
Customers expect business to manage their promises for competitive appeal
As exemplified above, understanding and managing customer expectations is a prerequisite to delivering a great customer experience.
3. Main Reasons/Benefits to Understanding Your Customer Expectations
It enables you and employees to focus on what’s important
You know the minimum performance levels required to keep customers happy & afford you the opportunity to exceed expectations
Once you know what’s expected, you can set, fix, and manage the expectations you put out, and evolving with time in regards to your relative performance.
Bridging Customer Expectation & Observed Performance
A satisfied customer is the one that has had expectations met at the minimum by the surplus of observed performance in relation to product/service procured and relative enhancement in the overall customer journey.
And as such, an experience the customer remembers is an observed performance that wows the customer’s expectation. Such experience is normally passed on to friends and associates and unsolicited referral whereby trust is earned and positive impression of such business provider or company is formed.
Fixing Observed Performance Shortfall
At certain times, businesses could fall short in delivering a consistent level of performance to meeting customer’s expectations due to varying factors. For example, under-trained employees, poor customer culture, poor customer service, over promised sales messages, unmanaged expectations, a dynamic industry sector etc. I will recommend:
Finding out first where you have failed to meet expectations quickly,
Get quality feedback and acknowledge the failure,
Respond quickly and work through the issues,
Fix related performance level or
Reset your customer’s expectation appropriately to ensure a better experience and save the relationship.
There are many examples of companies and businesses that have failed to meet customer’s expectations but have since gone a long way to fixing it, and bringing the performance up to par with the expectations or exceeding it over time.
From many documented surveys and even in my consultations with many business decision-makers, nearly all of them wish to provide a great customer experience or at least utilize customer experience as a competitive advantage in their industry or functioning sector. According to a recent Forrester research, 95% of business leaders say providing good customer experience is their top strategic priority. The question here is why most businesses or companies fail to implement the strategic components that could ensure great customer experience delivery?
Well, in summary, implementation of such strategic components does not immediately add up to the top-line in the short run and it requires commitment, the dedication of business leaders to a customer-centered strategy to achieving a great customer experience.
The unsaid truth is that a customer knows when your performance wows or sucks. A great customer experience is delivered when observed performance exceeds or equates to your customer expectation. Thus, a customer’s expectation and observed performance set the bar for the overall customer experience which is revealed by the customer’s satisfaction levels, which affects customer loyalty that could translate into an increase in revenue & lower cost to servicing such customer in the long run for a company or enterprise.
