Long gone are the days of using snail mail and placing catalog orders during business transactions.  Something that used to take days upon days to reach fruition now happens in literally moments.  With nearly a billion websites available at our fingertips and >100 social networking sites to join along with the use of email, smartphones, and tablets, we are always "connected" and can make decisions rapidly.  What does this mean from a customer service standpoint?  This means that customers are demanding, have lots of choices, and are in control.  

To make sure you are best positioned for capturing customers in this quick and picky market, you must first be set up for success.  You must learn to anticipate, manage, and exceed the expectations of your customers.  And, you must do all of this very FAST (remember- no one has time for a snail's pace anymore).  In Managing Expectations by Andrew Griffiths, he has "10 simple ways [to] get more customers than you can ever imagine simply by managing expectations."  They are, as written by Griffiths, the following:

1. Talk to your customers and clarify what they expect from you, what are their main issues and what can you possibly do better.

2. Overestimate how long it will take to deliver and then deliver early (for example tell them it will be ready Friday, knowing full well it will be ready on Wednesday).

3. Be proactive – don’t wait for your customers to contact you, always be one step ahead.

4. Don’t be bullied into over promising by demanding customers – it always tends to backfire on you.

5. If you say you will do something, make sure you do it.

6. Review every aspect of your business to determine what things you could do to exceed your customer’s expectations or even better, get an external person to do the review. A fresh pair of eyes will see what you can’t.

7. Be clear on the information you’re giving your customers. Is it factual and is it accurate?

8. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Customers hate it when they don’t know what is going on and can you blame them?

9. If there is a problem, get to the customer as soon as you can.

10. Go the extra mile. Often the littlest of extra service can totally exceed a customer’s expectation and therefore their experience.

When you apply all 10 of these, you must support each with a couple of overall, basic standards, which should be your business' way of life.  These are:

• Always respond to customer inquiries, no matter what means of contact is used, within 1 business day (but strive to be much faster than that).  Don't keep a customer waiting because time ticks away fast and that customer can quickly seek alternative solutions.  If the customer must wait to get a full response, immediately reply and set the expectation by justifying and stating the benefit of the delay.
• Communicate in a clear and concise manner and make sure that your responses thoroughly address all needs.  Less is more since we are bombarded by data all day long, and efficiency and thoroughness is imperative so you don't open yourself up to inaccurate interpretation.  If you fall short in this area, once again, you leave yourself vulnerable to losing respect and your customers. 

Tip: These standards should be applied internally and externally.  It's near impossible to have such expectations just in place for external communications because you will miss a beat if it is not an all embracing concept. 

All of these tactics, once applied, will give your customers just one choice for where to do business- they will always choose you.  If we can help you to manage your customers' expectations, let us know.