Setting Customer Expectations Upfront

A customer comes to you with certain expectations. You've made a promise in your sales literature, on your web site, or in your personal presentation. You "got the sale" - whether that's a design project, or the person is choosing to spend the night in your bed and breakfast, or eat at your restaurant.

Now comes the test to see if your promise or "brand" lives up to its name.

Since we live in a world filled with glitches, I don't expect every customer experience will move along without a problem of some type - large or small.

So how do you set expectations?

Let's say you're a bed and breakfast:

"We've taken every step to ensure you have a pleasant stay. However, if anything should arise then please let me know and we'll take care of the issue immediately."

Let's say you're a small web development firm with several clients and you've gained a new client:

"We're ready to begin your project and we're ready to show you the site map next week. Here are our deliverables for design, writing and programming. We're deadline oriented, but if I foresee any changes in schedule from either our end or your end then I'll let you know immediately."

When I sold roofing for the Home Depot, we set expectations like this with homeowners:

"This is construction and sometimes things happen. But we're here to completely back you up." And, Home Depot always did live up to its brand promise from my experience.

Setting expectations and resetting the expectations is important.

You're subtly letting the customer know problems can arise. Circumstances can get out of control in any industry. But if that happens, you know they'll be concerned and you'll do your best to handle any problems.

I believe business is about handling and solving problems successfully.

It's so easy when you're bidding on a job to lower your price, end up cutting your profits and then gripe about the client and wish the job would end.

It's also easy to be handling problems along the way successfully but not have the client appreciate your work and wish they would have chosen another contractor, web developer, hair stylist, shoe salesman or whomever.

In our experience, we had our home remodeled about 4 years ago. The construction company tore off our solarium and replaced it with 2 bedrooms and a study.

We were delayed 9 months because we waited for a permit through Los Angeles County.

Then we got ready to start about September 1st. The foreman on the job said "we should be done by Halloween." Great!

Then it became Thanksgiving, Christmas, and mid-January. A new owner took over the company and got mad at me when in early January I wanted to complain to the old owner.

They finished during the first week of February. Looking back, they did a nice job and the time frame was not unusual. However, they had improperly set my expectations too high.

When the new owner, who got mad at me, asked at the end if I would refer them to someone else I hesitated. However, I would have gladly said yes even if the deadlines had been missed but I was treated more professionally or tastefully during the process.

Set customer expectations upfront and frequently during the process until the job is complete.

Make sure you don't overpromise. And while it's tempting to say everything the customer wants to hear, you need to prepare them for reality. You'll both be better off when the project ends.