Where expectations come from

Satisfaction is a comparison, not a feeling

A customer is satisfied when what they got matched or beat what they expected. That means satisfaction has two levers, and most organisations only ever pull one.

You can improve what you deliver. You can also manage what is expected — and this is the cheaper, faster and more neglected lever. A parcel arriving in four days is excellent if five were promised and a failure if two were.

The four sources of expectation

1. What you promised. Advertising, the website, the delivery estimate, what a colleague said on the phone last week. Promises made anywhere in the organisation land on whoever answers next.
2. What competitors do. Customers do not compare you to your own past. Once one retailer offers next-day returns, that becomes the baseline for all of them.
3. What happened last time. Their own history with you. Exceptional service once sets a standard you must now meet.
4. What the situation implies. Nobody expects a corner shop to have a returns desk. Price, setting and branding all signal a service level before a word is exchanged.

The practical consequence: do not promise to end an awkward conversation. A promise made to make a customer stop being annoyed today creates a larger failure tomorrow, handled by a colleague who does not know it was made.

Internal customers

The colleague in the warehouse who needs your paperwork correct is a customer too. Organisations with poor internal service almost always have poor external service, because the failures travel. Someone waiting on your handover is waiting on your standards.

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Check your understanding. A caller is upset about a delay. You have no authority to expedite, but you could say "I'll see what I can do — it should be with you tomorrow." Name two ways that sentence causes damage.