How to Manage Customer Expectations (Even When They Keep Evolving)

by Hannah Jones
Personal Assistant & Marketing Coordinator
The Customer Experience Advantage

We talk a lot about customer expectations here at the Customer Experience Advantage. They are the foundation of the customer experience that David Avrin, CSP has centered his career around. The subject of customer experience changes with evolving customer expectations, meaning we have to keep up or become irrelevant. 

However, one thing David always seeks is the timeless elements of customers' desires. If you can tune out all of the noise, what are the customer needs that have remained steadfast through the multiple generations of his career in the field? 

1. Customers expect common sense solutions to common sense problems

I drop in to my local Wells Fargo branch to get a document notarized and the teller at the counter directs me to scan the QR code on the poster nearby to get on their “digital waiting list.” I say “ok,” as my iPhone opens the website. I fumble for my reading glasses to decipher the small text boxes and try to find a place to sit down to navigate this process, but there is still no furniture in the bank branch. So, I sit on a random side table stuck in the corner.

Halfway through the questionnaire, the website freezes, not allowing me to go to the next step in the sign-up process. Now to be clear, I am 15 feet away from the person who can notarize my document, but I am still trying to use the online form to get in the digital line.

David Avrin - Stop Shoving Your Do-it-Yourself “Options” Down Our Throats!

In this story, David describes the incredibly frustrating experience of a company's "time-saving" and "technologically innovative" development breaking down in real time. It might look like innovation from the top down, but from the ground (where your customers are), it's a golden example of how out-of-touch these solutions can be, and how they create an embarrassing look for your staff. Customer expectations throughout time are to be treated with common sense, dignity, and humanity. When your AI and digital systems don't have the same common sense, dignity, and humanity as the old systems, that doesn't look like progress; it looks like a joke and nobody is laughing.

2. Customers expect extraordinary responsiveness 

Create systems and expectations in your organization around responsiveness. Just as franchise restaurants might have a standard that all food is delivered within 3 minutes of being plated, or phones are answered by the third ring, you can decide that all emails are responded to within 24 hours or phone messages by the end of day. Customer responsiveness is either a priority or it’s not.

There will always be extraordinary circumstances, but policies, standards and targets are the only way to assure compliance. We have to create a culture of extraordinary responsiveness. Word will get out and that will enhance your reputation or brand (Which is essentially the same thing.)

And remember, it’s not about the policy — it’s about the people. It’s not about the returned call — it’s about our customers feeling valued and respected, and nothing is more important than a strong reputation of treating our customers well.

David Avrin - 5 Strategies for Consumer Engagement in 2022

As David's personal assistant, our responsiveness is critical to our business, and it's the first thing our clients often compliment us on. Meeting planners are juggling so many different things in the lead-up to an important event, and as David always says: "I will be the one thing you don't have to worry about." 

Customers have always and will always expect us to be as responsive as possible, but what is possible is always changing. It is now possible for companies to hire 24/7 customer service, so you can bet that's what your customers expect now. 

3. Customers expect you to keep up with the times

If your business model, your internal processes or the external delivery of your products or services were designed more than 15 years ago, your customers and competitors have been leaving you behind.

Think of all that’s changed in their lives…in all of our lives that have occurred in recent years. We can buy virtually anything that we can afford, from anywhere on the planet, online. Most things can be shipped overnight, and anything local can be delivered to your home…today! Information is a mere spoken request away from Siri, Alexa or Google.

So, your adopting some of these technologies, or creating a smart phone app to offer greater access or ease-of-ordering for your customers isn’t a pivot. It’s what’s required just to keep-up with your competitors and remain relevant to your customers.

David Avrin - What Are Customers Looking For In 2022?

Customers expect you to be forward-thinking, to anticipate our needs rather than falling behind. If you're always putting out fires in your business, you're missing out on the ideas and innovation that happens when your team has time to think deeply about the business moving forward. 

That's why David created the Morning Huddle Membership. I can compile these resources all day long, and we sincerely hope that you find them valuable. But the real solutions to your challenges are so much more specific than what we can point out in a short blog post. The Morning Huddle Membership is designed to bring your team together with a weekly video to probe deeply into the problems that you haven't had the chance to talk about, so that you can shape the landscape of the market in the years to come, instead of barely keeping up. Take a look at the sample videos available at MorningHuddleMembership.com and see if they are right for you and your team.