Effortless is the new black

"Delighting our customers"

"Delivering WOW customer service"

"Going the extra mile"

"Creating Moments of Truth"

Is it just me or is this getting a bit too raisiny, over the top and unicorns-dancing-on-rainbows-like?

Phrases like these have been a common place in Customer Service for almost two decades and have led to a deeply held (and wrong!) belief that exceeding customer expectations is something easily achievable and – worse still – that it leads to loyalty, better CX, and increased share of wallet. Does it, though?

I used to believe in unicorns dancing on rainbows, but I let this belief go. It's time we did the same with customer satisfaction scores.

1. You are NOT exceeding your customer's expectations

Let's rip that bandaid right off! In a survey by Harvard Business Review, 89% of organisations said that their main customer strategy is to exceed customer expectations. So far so good, but it only goes downhill from there... Despite those heroic efforts to go the extra mile, 84% of customers said that their expectations had not been exceeded, and for many surveyed customers, their expectations had not even been met. No unicorns dancing on rainbows to be seen!

How so? For one thing, you don't know what your customer really expects. We tend to interpret 'delight' from our own subjective perspective and rely on our common sense to deliver the right experience. But what looks like an excellent experience to you, may result to be a basic experience in the eyes of your customer. Bare in mind, too, that your customer is not comparing your service to that of your competitors within the same sector – they are comparing it to any other service they have received recently, which could be Amazon, First Direct or John Lewis, for that matter... Whops!

2. There is little more to be gained beyond meeting expectations

The conventional wisdom seems to be that exceeding customer's expectations entices them to purchase additional products and spend more money with the company in the long term. Guess what? It's another unicorn story we are telling ourselves. Exceeding customer expectations doesn't win you loyalty. Meeting expectations and delivering on your core promises and values - does! The same survey by Harvard Business Review draws a clear link between delighting customers and loyalty – there is none! The better you are at meeting customers' expectations and delivering on your basic promises, the more loyal the customers get. Beyond that, no matter how dazzling the service experience is, the loyalty dial doesn't move.

That's a lot of wasted investment in the long run, and it doesn't get any better in the short term, either. Customer service efforts to wow the customer don't seem to get much recognition. It is in our human nature to punish organisations for terrible service much more than reward them for delightful one. Customers are unlikely to mention an excellent experience, but they tend to mention a negative one to an average of 16 people. In other words, delight the customer and there is a chance their dog and canary will hear about it. Mess up, and their whole social media audience will be on fire.

3. Focus on the ease of doing business

If exceeding customers' expectations doesn't work, what does? Research by PwC shows that speed, convenience and helpful employees matter most to the customer, each hitting over 70% in importance, and that 43% of consumers would pay more for greater convenience. In other words, effortless customer service with minimum friction is what gets the W. Companies that get this right, prioritise technologies and operations that provide these benefits over developing funky features that don't resolve the issue and have the client waste their time and effort. And there is a lot to win!

The less effort the customer needs to put in, the more loyal they become. And the more loyal they become, the longer they stay the customer and the more they are willing to spend with you. In the language of finance, this means increased margins, increased customer lifetime value and increased share of wallet. As far as the research can tell, what the customers care most about is the ease of doing business, i.e., effortless customer service is the best and most effective indicator of customer loyalty. So put away the flowers and the "Thank You for Your Business" cards and just focus on making it easy for the customer.

4. Kill the effortS

So now that we know "effort" is the dirty word, let's break this down to understand why your customer doesn't want you to talk dirty to them. There are few types of effort we should look at, but the dirties one by far is time effort. Anything that costs your customer extra time kills the experience. Needing to repeat information or needing to make a repeat contact, waiting to get through to an agent, long set-up process – all these are business relationship cancer, because you are actively wasting your customers' time (which they don't have!) and irritating them in the process.

First of all, make it quick. Second, of all, make it easy... Anything that requires of your customer excessive mental or physical effort is dirty. Your customer doesn't want to read your long ass emails, review your 20-page-long terms and conditions, search through your manuals to look for answers, or visit your store to return an item or activate an account. Most often than not, they don't even want to reach out to ask for help, but want you to resolve their issue without them even asking. So either learn how to anticipate your customers' needs, solve their problems first time, make things easy to understand, and provide them with a frictionless experience... or watch them walk away sooner or later.

To sum up...

Making it easy for your customers is the way forward. And if you think about it, by making it easy for them, you are making it easy for yourself. There is no need for you to go out of your way to exceed customer expectations with birthday cards, freebies, flashy bells and whistles, and whatnots – no matter how fancy these can get, they are no substitute for speed, convenience and efficiency which is what your customer ultimately expects of you. Research confirms that organisations that have their people focus on the basics, i.e., delivering on the core promises, meeting customer expectations and delivering a frictionless experience (and doing just that!) see the return in the long term. So how about just embracing that?