No, this post isn’t about making money on Twitter. If you’re into that kind of thing, then I’m sorry, you’re in the wrong place. My bad.
What’s interesting to me (and hopefully you) is why headlines like this work. If setting realistic expectations is so crucial to customer experience, then why are we continually hooked with this kind of bait? And, at what point do expectations cross the line from optimistic to misleading?
Expectations and Customer Experience
I won’t get much opposition by stating that setting realistic expectations plays a large part in creating a great customer experience. People don’t want to feel like they’ve been tricked or conned into something they don’t want. Over-promising and under-delivering is a surefire way to anger customers.
However, it seems like there’s a very fine line we have to walk. The expectations we set, while being realistic, should also elicit strong initial emotions. It’s been shown (by people much smarter than me) that emotion can account for as much as 50% of a customer’s purchase experience. You’ve seen Steve Jobs give a keynote, right?
Funny that they don’t talk about any downsides during those keynote speeches. No mention of shoddy networks or subpar antennas. Nothing said about their closed systems and lack of Flash support. Yet, people love Apple (throw me in that group). I have a phone that sucks as a phone, but I still love it because of everything else it does and how it does it.
What do you think? Are expectations as important as we make them out to be? Or is emotion more important? And another question: if you’re providing a product or service that creates a large amount of perceived value, then do expectations even matter?
Hi Tim I think expectations will always be important. To me the perfect relationship (personal or business) is based on expectations set and expectations met. If expectations are not managed then however good you are today, you may be caught out by inflated expectations tomorrow. There’s a related topic of “standards” and “extras.” Knowing what your customers consider to be standard and what they consider extra is essential to avoid expectation “creep”.
The right mix, or balance, between expectations and emotions are very specific to your target audience and type of transaction. Each person is going to require a different ratio, e.g. some people are two-thirds emotion and one-third expectations, while others are the reverse, one-third emotions and two-thirds expectation. As well as each type of transaction/product, for example online banking services versus YouTube. You need to understand that ratio and design accordingly.
For example, Apple gets a lot of media coverage but it’s still only about 10% of the PC market. That’s because most PC buyers are businesses and they rely on the PC they purchase to meet rational expectations rather than any emotional needs (the actual users may feel differently but we are talking about the purchasers).
However, Apple leads the tablet market because that is a personal, entertainment product and therefore we have stronger emotional ties to it. We accept flaws in the functionality, like bad wireless reception, due to the enormous entertainment / emotional high it delivers.
PS … I would always ignore a headline like that from someone I did now “know.” But since I have bumped into you on Twitter, I knew that there had to be substance behind it. I was not disappointed – expectations met! 😉