Monthly Archives

Is There an Expectations Gap Between Your Customer’s Perceptions and Their Actual Experience?

To begin with and to set expectations, this post will be of interest if you are in sales or business development or another client facing role. If not external client facing, you may have internal clients and deadlines to meet for internal stakeholders. Effective setting of expectations impacts most people in their daily work activities and can have a positive impact for both internal and external client satisfaction.

Is it Just Me? Is Expectation Setting Being Ignored?

For business development and sales professionals, we are most likely aware of the critical importance of managing our client’s expectations, initially prior to a sale and throughout the client relationship process.

I read a post recently, “The Complete Guide to Customer Expectations”,which captures the essence which I’m trying to make here in this post, from a customer expectations perspective. Prior to “setting” expectations, you may also want to understand your client’s or customer’s expectations to begin with. Essentially, it should come down to under promising and over delivering… why is that concept becoming so foreign?

Perhaps, many of you have felt disappointed when you were about to buy something or shortly after you made a purchase and encountered an “un-welcome surprise” that wasn’t disclosed prior to or during the sales process? A surprise that caused you to seriously reconsider or cancel the purchase altogether? It might even have driven you to share a negative opinion of the vendor with your offline or online network?

Early in my business development and sales career, the effective setting of a client’s expectations was integrated into most of our sales and business development training and considered an essential “best practice” for high client satisfaction and a solution’s success. Over time, through my experiences and observations, I find that “setting client expectations” is becoming a lost art. I’ve included an “expectations” observation that will serve as an example and a framework to help alleviate the concern.

Wardrobe Box Promotion – “Your Website Says You Sell Them?

A few months ago, my family was on a long overdue mission of de-cluttering our home. To store some of our clothes, we needed “wardrobe” boxes. I Googled “wardrobe box” and our city name and was delighted to see relevant search results. I selected the first organic result and was directed to the web page of a prominent moving and supplies company that had a sale on wardrobe boxes and a phone number to call for the promotion. At this point, my expectations were high, “Great, this is going to be easy” … or so I thought.

I called the phone number and asked the person who greeted me about the wardrobe box promotion. Unfortunately, they didn’t even know what a wardrobe box was… I mentioned the promotion and began to explain what a wardrobe box was and what we needed it for. She still didn’t seem aware, and after searching her product database without finding anything, put me on hold to ask around… She returned to the phone to tell me they didn’t have stock of the wardrobe box but could have them shipped in from across the country… for an extra cost!

My high expectations were now deflated… In my view, there are a few different opportunities for improvement here, from internal training to communications across the different lines of business about preparing and delivering on promises and promotions. As a buyer, there are steps that we take, prior to reaching out, that could take many months (or longer than a year), or just a few minutes. Companies should be aware that our expectations are set during our research and our buyers journey. In this example, my expectations were high when I saw the promotion on the website but were gradually depleted as the process was prolonged and confusion set in. A lost opportunity for the seller.

Defining the Disconnect – “What about B2B?”

Setting expectations should apply in all sales environments, in my opinion, including Business to Business (B2B). Business to Consumer (B2C) customers’ expectations are driven by their previous experiences with a company or the company’s reputation, and B2B client’s expectations are driven by the contract or agreement they negotiated and agreed upon.

So where exactly is the expectations disconnect? Where are solution providers falling short? I like the way this “Bridging the Gap in B2B Service Expectations” article and the linked whitepaper break expectations down into three types:

• Failure of the customer to buy what they need
• Failure of the vendor to deliver the designed solution
• Failure of the vendor to execute on the solution

Common scenarios where expectations aren’t aligned

It may be difficult to set expectations externally, when internally, the lines of business have different expectations or a different understanding about what’s important to the company. My quest for moving supplies is a relevant example of what can happen when sales, marketing and operations are not in alignment.

From a line of business perspective, here is a helpful Forbes article which provides some insights on what different lines of businesses expect from each other.

How to Improve Expectations Alignment – “What Are They? … We Sell Those?”

Setting expectations can also be a part of the digital experience, the perception or expectations created while the future customer or client is reading your website content, downloading your online materials, or during any other touch points of their research in advance of doing business with you.

Other expectations insights:

Consider the full experience. Expectations aren’t just for future clients or customers, consider your current customers’ expectations as well. Each stage in the buyer’s journey should be considered when setting expectations

Get agreement or buy-in. Don’t just state your expectations – make sure they align with your customers thinking or what they believe about your business. Avoid the assumption that they “get it”, just because you think you did a great job explaining your solution, agreement or proposals

Alert the other party of changes immediately. As a personal “managing expectations” best practice, I always ask my internal delivery team how much time they need to deliver on a client or stakeholder requirement. They will provide me with a time they are confident to deliver on that expectation. In addition, I also ask them to let me know in advance if they cannot meet that commitment so I can re-set my client or stakeholder’s expectations accordingly. Telling me that you are going to be late, shortly before or when the requirement is due would be an expectations management fail. In my books, also responding with a low quality or sub-standard response that also doesn’t meet expectations is the same as being late.

Wrapping it up…

Perhaps the customer service representative at the moving supplies company wasn’t aware of the wardrobe box promotion or wasn’t trained about company products. The key to fulfilling external expectations is to ensure every department and employee knows what the company stands for and how to deliver on that promise.

Maybe it comes down to alignment, communications and training? How can your client’s expectations be set properly, if the internal lines of business are not communicating effectively?

There are bound to be times when you can’t meet expectations – everyone is human, and some circumstances are out of our control, however I found these best practices, approach, and expectation setting philosophies works for me.

Robert (Rob) Burns is a digital business development specialist in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Rob prefers to discuss a business strategy with his clients before talking about any technology, marketing or digital tactics.  Once Rob understands a client’s business objectives, he will then advise them about gnooko services and solutions: including Digital Marketing Strategy, Audience Segmentation and Persona Development, Website Design and Development, Search Marketing and SEO, Social Marketing and of course Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, and Marketing Technology.

My objective with this post is to share my experiences with those of you who are considering posting and haven’t yet. Hopefully you’ll find value in my experiences getting over my fear of publishing.

Although I’m heavily invested in digital business development and digital marketing, I wouldn’t consider myself an expert. There’s so much change and so much to know. However, I do consider myself an “expert” in procrastinating in not setting up a blog or publishing on LinkedIn Publisher. I have listed all of the reasons behind my fear and how I overcame each obstacle, allowing me to finally write my first post on LinkedIn Publisher.

1. Procrastination and Fear – “Read A Lot and Write A Lot”

I’ve procrastinated publishing on LinkedIn Publisher since it was introduced back in early 2014 – almost three years ago. Sure, I have posted more than my fair share of updates on LinkedIn and other social platforms, but on LinkedIn Publisher… yikes… I don’t even have a blog.

My intent was sincere, but I always found an excuse to not take that next step and get down to writing. My justification was that I wasn’t sure what to write or who to write for, and which voice to publish in. At the time, I was in a contract role that was continually being redefined. The other reason was that I wasn’t confident that I had anything compelling or different to say other than what my peers or the marketing industry were already writing about.

My writing was usually focused on business proposals, internal business communications, and responding to Request for Proposals (RFP) or Request for Information (RFI) for clients or future clients. I had very little focus on external writing.

“Read a Lot and Write a Lot”

Early in my technology career, I was fortunate to sell to a popular author of horror novels. He was actually my first computer system sale. He and his wife invited me to their home to set the system up, which I did, and we enjoyed a nice dinner together afterwards. We fostered a friendship from that point, and I remember him telling me about a discussion he had with Stephen King. He told me that Stephen said writing all comes down to “reading a lot and writing a lot.”

How did I get over this fear? To be honest, I haven’t. It’s still a concern…but my first step? I just started writing to get past that fear, and I asked for help. I have resources available that could help me edit and condense my writing. I can get verbose, but I knew that already.

My first few go-rounds at writing this post, although edited and ready to be published, weren’t. I just didn’t feel they were on-target or strategic, but I gained experience writing them and my confidence increased. Plus, those first pieces of content still have value for future posts.

2. Confidence and Imposter Syndrome – “You Know More Than You Give Yourself Credit For”

After seven plus years in the digital sector, I was reading and learning non-stop. I was (still am) an Amazon book junkie. I was regularly attending digital marketing and marketing technology conferences, continually taking online courses from leading digital marketing authorities, in addition to pursuing on-site certifications from leading educational and Ivy league institutions. I was growing and expanding my knowledge and gaining credentials within the digital sector… yet I couldn’t muster the confidence to start writing… Why? Even with this knowledge and my experience of 25 plus years of business development and over 7 years in the digital sector, I couldn’t get past that fear.

My industry peers and colleagues encouraged me to write and start a blog. They told me that I was more than qualified, with expertise that people would learn from, and readers that would be interested in what I had to say.

But what would I write about?

3. Topics – “Eat the Elephant a Bite at a Time”

Over-analysis paralysis. I’m a bit, maybe a lot, analytical and detailed. I didn’t want to write something of low value or interest to my audience, which added to my procrastination. I knew that I didn’t want to write about topics that were being over-blogged about, and I still have an issue with that. But the more I thought about it, the more granular I found the topics. Instead of boring subjects, I just started focusing on smaller elements… like this post. I was going to write about much more, but will leave that for another post, segmenting this into smaller pieces.

4. Edits and Proofing – “Ask for Help”

As I started writing, I first wrote all my ideas down and tried to adhere to a writing framework:

• a strong headline
• knowledge I want to share
• information my audience would find of value
• ideas I am trying to help my audience with
• being thought-provoking
• writing in a story format about a truth

… and leaving the readers with a lesson learned or a thought-provoking conclusion.

Although there is more strategy to writing on LinkedIn Publisher, I started from this vantage point. My first attempt was based on this framework and I became a bit better with my subsequent edits and content.

Hitting Publish – Be strategic, but “Just Do It”

Sometimes good enough is perfect and trying for perfection isn’t. I’ve learned that posting original content that is interesting and of value to your audience is important, however there are many people that don’t have the expertise, insights and experience that we have who could find value in what we have to say. Over time, as we create more content and share more of the tacit expertise within us, we will add value to our audience.

Future… Seeing that that I’m now past the fundamental, but important milestone of publishing my first post, I am now working on new topics to write about and doing research about them, while fine-tuning my content and post strategy… All of which I hope to share in future posts about what my clients, future clients and my peers would find of interest.

Robert (Rob) Burns is a digital business development specialist in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Rob prefers to discuss a business strategy with his clients before talking about any technology, marketing or digital tactics.  Once Rob understands a client’s business objectives, he will then advise them about gnooko services and solutions: including Digital Marketing Strategy, Audience Segmentation and Persona Development, Website Design and Development, Search Marketing and SEO, Social Marketing and of course Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, and Marketing Technology.