Customer expectations

When you enter a retail shop, you expect to be served within a reasonable time frame and with common courtesy.

When we are not served, and have to stand around waiting, we become angry. This anger is the result of us being made to feel irrelevant, because we are obviously not important enough to be asked if we need help. This perceived ‘snub’ may lead us to walk out, whether we wanted to purchase something or not.

As they say, you only get one chance at making a good first impression. Our first impression of this particular shop is not brilliant, and we are therefore unlikely to return.

If we became angry after only waiting for one minute, then our expectations were extremely unrealistic to begin with (the ‘blue rinse set’ come to mind). However, if we had waited for five minutes without acknowledgement that we even existed, then our firmly declared vow to never return is perhaps justifiable.

Whether we are the salesperson in the retail shop, or the prospective customer, we should manage our expectations of what constitutes good customer service and what does not. For some, being approached within a minute of walking into a shop means the salesperson is ‘pushy’, whereas for others it is ‘slack’.

This is where being able to read body language is extremely useful. If someone enters your shop and immediately begins looking around for someone, rather than casually looking around, then it is safe to assume they expect to be served immediately.

For such a person, a one minute wait seems like five minutes, and they will insist it has definitely been five minutes already!

However, if they slowly stroll in and lazily look around, then an immediate approach could be annoying to them.

For salespeople it is critical to be able to ‘read’ your prospective customers. As a customer, it is also important to realise that our expectations may indeed be unrealistic. For example, to enter an extremely busy store and expect to be served immediately is obviously unrealistic, however it is annoyingly true that many people expect ‘VIP’ service no matter what the circumstances!

What if salespeople could ‘manage’ customer expectations? How powerful would it be if they could change our expectations of them?

Their secret is to under promise and over deliver.

If you, as a customer, are annoyed at not being served and the salesperson knows they cannot serve you for another five minutes, they might tell you it will be close to ten minutes. Your initial anger could be overcome with some empathetic line such as “I realise this is very annoying for you and I do appreciate your patience, and apologise for the inconvenience’.

Having stroked your ego and manipulated you into expecting a ten minute delay, they then approach in five minutes time saying something like “I made an effort to see to you as soon as possible as I know you are in a hurry. How can I help you?”

Now, not only has your initial expectation of being served immediately been turned into a ten minute wait, but now the salesperson has ‘over delivered’ by seeing to you earlier than they had promised to.

By manipulating customer expectations, the salesperson can make these expectations work for them.

When you ask for a delivery date for something you just purchased, a good salesperson will add two or three days to the lead time. If you then complain they might offer to ‘speak to the manager’, and then return to say they have reduced this by a day. They have now won your admiration and made you feel as though you have received special treatment.

Then, when they call you the next day to let you know your item can be delivered a day or two early, you are now thinking that this is the best salesperson ever!

As a customer you need to be aware of these games that salespeople play, but the good news is that not many salespeople are actually good at their job, so you are unlikely to encounter such ‘manipulation’. Just in case you do though, at least now you know!

Customer expectations? As customers our expectations are naturally extremely important, but for salespeople they are just an opportunity to make them look good!