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Managing customer expectations
Managing your customer’s expectations may not be as easy as it first appears. This is mostly because all of your customers will have different levels of expectation, some need only a basic level and some will want much more. Take for example the timeliness of the delivery of your product.
Let’s say it normally takes you 4 days to process your customer requirements, from receipt of payment through to delivery. What if you had a customer that needed your product in 2 days and they neglected to tell you this as they assumed delivery would be immediate. Without further communications you will not meet this customer’s expectations and they will be dissatisfied.
Now take the same example but this time the customer can comfortably wait 2 weeks for your delivery. You don’t know this so you expend additional cost in getting the product out as fast as you can, e.g. premium working. You’ve met your customer’s expectations but now you have made less profit on the job.
So, what’s the answer, how can we find out the expectations of our customers? Relying on them telling us is not the best option but appears to be the most popular solution. As the expectation’s of our customers only exist in one place, their mind, we have a very simple answer, ask them. For your business sector there are probably only a few key expectations, list them out and ask your customers. Clearly, in mass market volume businesses this may not apply as well as in low volume high value deliverables.
The key point is you can only exceed your customer’s expectations when you know what they are!
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