You may not be able to give customers everything they want, but meeting their “human expectations” will help you keep customers happy, satisfied, and loyal.
“Customer expectations shift constantly, and they shift easily,” says Naomi Karten, author of Managing Customer Expectations. “And just because you know what they are today, doesn’t mean you necessarily know what they’ll be tomorrow. Yet, how satisfied — or dissatisfied your customers are is determined by these expectations and how well you succeed in meeting them.”
Customer expectations are based on everything from the level of service your competitors provide, to promises made in your marketing materials, to past experiences with your company, to “whether the toast got burned this morning,” says Karten.
Many of those expectations are based on things that are completely outside of the frontline reps control, but you can have a real and meaningful impact on what Karten calls “human expectations.” These are the expectations that all people have of how they should be treated.
More on “human expectations” appears in the October issue of Customer Communicator, the training newsletter for frontline reps.