Expectations

Imagine the following situation. You are visiting a beach resort for your holidays. Your expectations are normal, as you have been to other beach resorts before. You would expect the rooms to be clean, the facilities to be working, the beach to be crowded but peaceful, the swimming pool to be clean of leaves, and the receptionist to get your room reservation right.

Imagine now, that as you arrive at the beach resort in your taxi, the door porter immediately comes up and opens your door, welcoming you with a warm greeting. Then, as you walk towards the reception counter, you are offered upgrades for your chalets. Without asking, you are offered complementary welcome drinks to soothe your thirst. When you enter your room, you are wonderfully surprised by a fruit basket specially prepared for you. You open the drapes, wonderful sunshine warms your feet, and the smell of the sea breeze invites you to take a dip in the crystal clear water.

Not only are the facilities functional, they are also in tip-top condition, well-maintained and new! When you check out of the resort, you are delighted to note that you are given a VIP member card, a 25% discount, and complementary taxi service to the airport.

If your initial expectations, on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being best), were somewhere around 5, the beach resort would have given you an experience that scored somewhere around 8! The beach resort has exceeded your expectations!

The wonderful world of customer service: always exceed your customer's expectations.

But, this can turn out to be a double-edged sword.

Imagine, now, you are returning for your second visit to the same beach resort. Pampered by the service you received, your expectations have now soared from a mere 5 to a solid 8. You arrive at the beach resort, you receive the same service of complementary drinks, fruit basket, tip-top facilities, discount.

*YAWN*

The beach resort offers you an experience score of 8. The beach resort has only met your expectations.

What had happened?

Your expectations have increased, naturally. Hence, when you receive the same experience, it seems routine, nothing special. So herein lies the difficulty of satisfying customers. The beach resort, having been such a wonderful service provider in the beginning, is now considered "normal" by you.

So the beach resort has to constantly improve their service in order to improve the customer's experience. But there is always a limit to how much one can give. Sooner or later, discounts will amount to 99%, everyone will have a VIP member card, and your equipment will fall apart.

What can be done?

Instead of striving to always exceed the customer's expectations, one should think about managing the customer's expectations. What does this mean? A good example is given here:

Disneyland manages the customer's expectations for queueing for their roller coaster ride. At a certain point in the queue, there is a signage that says "20 minutes more". You look at your watch, mentally add 20 minutes to the time, and wait. When it is your turn to board the roller coaster, you steal a glance at your watch. Wow! Only 15 minutes have passed! You feel happy. Disneyland has exceeded your expectations......

Or have they?

Disneyland has timed the queue, and they know very well that it is only 15 minutes from the point where the signage is placed. And yet, they proclaim 20 minutes of waiting time for the customer standing at that point.

How can the beach resort manage your expectations?

((MORE TO COME...))