The Unlikely Writer

Last week I wrote on a simple (and personal) way of measuring your customer experience and realized that the scale of measuring customer experience is tilted slightly.  In that article I wrote how you can divide your experience with your expectations and come up with a way of how to rate your customer experience.  I realized that if you get what you expect from a service (such as a coffee shop or the billing department at your local cable company) then the experience is leaves no impact on you.  It is like a drink of lukewarm water when you are finished working out.

My example from last week about measuring customer experience still applies, but as an employee, or a boss, or a barista you have go beyond the personal expectations of your customer to give them a good customer experience.  The benefits of a good customer experience vary, as a barista you want your customer to come back and spend more money (and leave a tip) then share the experience with their friends and bring them too (more tips).  As an employee you want your boss to spend her money on you and invite you back for more work, and conversely as a boss you want your employees to stay with you and keep up the good work.  So this begs you to notice that everyone is involved and should be trying to exceed expectations.

The customer experience scale looks like this:

A quick observation (and any real life experience) would show that receiving what you expected leaves you the same level of happiness as drinking lukewarm water; a forgettable experience.  On the other hand, receiving more than what you expected makes you want to tell your friends and come back for more.

The lesson is that while working with your customers, partners, or bosses, keep in mind that simply delivering what is expected is awesome, but since the scale is slightly tilted; you might be offering a forgettable experience to someone who decides what your bonus will be next quarter.