The Baloney Of Exceeding Customer Expectations

1. *
“Running an Agile Fortune 500 Company”
Aditya Yadav, aditya.yadav@gmail.com
in.linkedin.com/in/adityayadav76

2. * A Typical Global Company
* Fortune 500/1000
* 200 Divisions
* 40 Countries
* 25000 Employees
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3. *
@ Acme Inc.

4. * Original Question “How do we exceed customer
expectations every time?”
* The Correct Question - “Before I answer that
lets relook at the entire concept of exceeding
customer expectations. Shall we?”
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5. *
And The Philosophy Behind The Answer

6. * Every manager worth his salt will talk about –
Managing Expectations
* Which starts with – Promise Less and Deliver
More
* And some vague notion of – Delighting the
Customer
* And then starts the Ritual of – Lets Exceed
Customer Expectations…
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The premise is this – you won’t actually tell the customer – you will help him succeed
in the way he hopes to – within the limits of your business relationship
The first problem is if you are not sure of being able to help your customer succeed
and assure him of that you are already out of the game
Secondly, there is no guarantee of what you will deliver, so obviously your organization
is not geared to deliver that but its mostly a heroic effort on the part of a few
Thirdly, nobody is sure what is being promised or expected and will rarely deliver
anything beyond what’s stated in the contract
Fourthly, there is a lot of room for blame games, empire building etc.
Fifthly, without a consistent experience, a guarantee of some sort and building up of
exact expectations there is no Building of Brand Value (!!!) or Value-Premium
Sixth, you are lying to yourself because what’s not promised and not delivered is
mostly unmeasurable, so you can always claim success while your clients and business
goes down the drain in reality
And then you will pray and hope that auto-magically some hero in your firm will do
something that will delight the customer e.g. things like tickling their belly button,
wine and dine them on the house, give them a feedback form when they are at a high
so that you can game the system back home etc.
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8. *
Business can be very simple, it starts with figuring out what your customers need to succeed, figuring out how you will deliver that, and what is a
reasonable share for your firm in exchange for delivering that value
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“Exceeding customer expectations” “Promise less deliver more” “Customer Delight” are schemes of Managers who beat around the bush and
manipulate the measures of success and live by gaming the system
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The real success stories are the one’s
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That figure out what customers need to succeed
That promise that in clear and unambiguous terms
Deliver that
Build a reputation or Brand (!!!)
Get invited (inbound marketing) again and again
Get referred to others, because its clear what they can do and cannot do, and what they will do and with what probability
Charge a Premium for helping customers succeed
The ones that fail are the ones
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Where the Focus is on The Manager’s Success rather than that of the Customer
Which don’t know what they can do and cannot do
Which know exactly how to do the things they do best
Which have no idea of what the customer needs to succeed
Which are Snake Oil Salesmen
Which sell Cookie Cutter, Canned Solutions, Bloatware, Vaporware etc.
Which depend on the skills of the salesmen in Sales using Age Old Cheap Monkey Tricks that have worked in the past
Everything is over complicated without any clarity for them or their customers
Deliver poor and ambiguous experience
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9. Aditya!!!
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