How do you make sure you meet a customer's expectation?
by Ali
(Egypt)
How do you make sure you meet a customer's expectation?
Answer
Date: November 12th, 2007
Aha, the 45,700 euro question! ;-)
This question has 2 parts:
1) How do you know a customer's expectation?
2) Once you know, how do you meet them?
Let's tackle the first question first.
You can learn about your customers in general by conducting research. You could read up on market studies done by Research companies such as Forrester or Jupiter or Gartner, etc. Or you could conduct your own survey.
To learn the expectations of a specific customer, there is only one way. You listen and you ask. Ok, 2 ways. Being able to listen actively to what a customer is saying is by far the most important customer service skill.
And ask. Too many businesses assume. Many businesses are even started (and much money put into it) on the assumption that there even is a market. Don't make that mistake. Ask the customer what would make them a happy customer. Ask before, ask after. Ask during. And listen!
Now for meeting the expectations
You (ie. the business) can work towards meeting known expectations beforehand or at the time.
Here's what I mean with beforehand. Example: McDonalds customers expect to get their meals quickly. So McDonalds has put a process in place to deliver the food as fast as possible (hence fast food). If they had no process in place, it would be very difficult to do it efficiently at the time.
Meeting expectations of customers at the time, ie. when they have expressed what they want to you, it is all about attitude. Will you go out of your way to try to deliver what they've asked? Will you go out of your way to even OVERdeliver? Or will you just state company policy and brush them off. It's also about the company's attitude. Does your boss give you freedom (even within limits) to pursue the hapiness of customers? Do you take some freedom?
Those are questions I cannot answer. You have to ask that within your company!
At your service,
Erwin.
Without Site Build It! and Content 2.0 I would've never been able to build this site.
