The Evolution of Customer Experience – What do your Customers Expect?

How true…if still hard to bear at times!

A similar mantra could also exist for the relationship between a business and its customers, ‘Never complain about the increasing expectations of your customers because it’s these expectant customers who keep your business moving forward, and keep the tax man happy’.

As business owners, we can often forget that we are also customers; we have expectations of the people we do business with, in the same way that our customers have expectations of us.

Go back through the annals of time and you will find that customers have always had the same basic expectations. A degree of respectful friendliness, a fair price, a quality product or service, delivered promptly, or at an appropriate speed. It’s just that over the years, as civilisation has progressed, from donkey to horse to car to plane; and from stone tablet to pen and paper, to computer…and back to tablet again(!)…so have our expectations.

We find ourselves in an age where everything must be smaller, faster, available, accessible, mobile, portable, branded…and where ‘must have now!’ is the order of the day. As business owners and managers, we have to keep up with the pace of change, not only living up to, but exceeding the expectations of our customers.

So how do we keep up? In fact how do we make keeping up seem like child’s play? By knowing what it is that our customers want, and then developing the systems to ensure that they get exactly what they want consistently.