I was thinking about expectations the other day and it reminded me of something that I wrote in How To Wow, so I thought I’d share that with you:
There is a common theory when it comes to customer relations and service that brands should aim to exceed expectations.
That’s fair enough, you might say.
But, is there a payoff to exceeding expectations and beating your own promises?
In a 2014 article in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, Ayelet Gneezy and Nicholas Epley reported that through their research they had found that:
“Breaking one’s promise is costly, but exceeding it does not appear worth the effort.”
Moreover, in a pure business context, Involve, the employee engagement agency, conducted a piece of research in 2012 where they found that failing to deliver on promises would result in 68% of all customers cancelling a subscription to a service, and that many of them would not be likely to return.
Insight in action
A couple of summers ago, on a Thursday evening around 9 p.m. I received a call from my bank.
It was an automated call and, after going through some security checks, the automated voice asked me to confirm whether a series of recent transactions on my bank account were mine or not.
I listened to the details of a series of transactions and indicated that I didn’t recognise any of them.
Once I had done that, I was connected to one of the bank’s agents, a member of their anti-fraud team. The agent explained that the bank, as part of it’s anti-fraud efforts, tracks and monitors transactions on my account against my historical spending records and flags up potential issues when purchases are not ‘on trend’.
Discussing the transactions with the agent, I told her that I wasn’t responsible for any of them and had no knowledge of them. She then said that my bank card had obviously been compromised and that she was going to cancel it, order me a new one, arrange to block any pending transactions on my account and refund me for any that had gone through.
At the end of the call, the agent then told me that my card had now been cancelled and an order for a new card had been placed. She went on to explain that a new one would take up to four working days to arrive.
The wait didn’t worry me given that the bank had removed the threat of fraud on my account. But, given that it was Thursday evening and my new card may not arrive til Weds of the following week, I was thankful that I had enough cash and other cards in my wallet that would see me through til then.
On Saturday, however, I noticed that my new card had arrived in the post and was ready to use.
I was surprised and grateful to the bank for getting it to me so soon, especially since the agent had mentioned that it could take up to 4 working days to arrive.
Then, as someone who specialises in customer service and experience strategy, I began to wonder about the whole process.
I began to wonder if the bank and the agent had over-performed? Or, did they just manage my expectations and give themselves the right amount of leeway to make sure that they were able to deliver on their promise?
I don’t know.
However, what they did do is not let me down and they kept their promise.
Too often have I experienced and heard stories about firms saying they are going to do something for them not to deliver or to meet their own promises. This is dangerous.
When it comes to customer service, understanding and serving our customers, companies could do very well by making promises and then making sure they keep them.
How to use it
It’s common in business to hear someone say that you should aim to exceed expectations. However, the research does not support this assertion. What it does find, however, is that you should always keep your promises and meet expectations but that there is also little pay off in exceeding expectations.
The implications for business are simple:
- Don’t spend too much time on thinking about how you can exceed expectations; and
- Spend more time on making sure that you deliver on any promises you make.
To find out how you are doing on those consider doing the following:
- List out the sort of promises that you are making in your business on a regular basis whether that’s keeping appointments, delivering on time, calling someone when you said you would etc etc.
- Evaluate how you are doing against these promises.
- If you are not at 100% on meeting basic promises then you’ll have identified some great areas for improvement that will pay service, experience and retention dividends.
Credit: Photo by Norbert Braun on Unsplash
