The Errors in Experience: Assumptions

Swimming was never my forte. My swim-literate friends have tried multiple times but in vain to try and get me to swim. They are still trying and I am still assiduously disappointing them to this day. Why am I talking about my swimming prowess in an article about experience?

A recent trip to Goa served as an excellent reminder to me about what assumptions I may be erroneously making about my clients. Those assumptions contribute to diminishing the overall experience and marring business. It all started with some of our more adventure-seeking friends seeking to try out this contraption called ‘Banana Ride’. I had absolutely no clue about what this ride entailed and was not particularly bananas about it, due to my Olympic swimming skills. Giving in to peer-pressure (read: pushes, swears, tugs) I tagged along. But note this: none of us knew how to swim, and we made that absolutely clear to the organizers. Our words, quoted approximately, were, “You have to help us out there. In spite of these life jackets, we are no good in the waters” We got repeated assurances from them. They vouched that experienced swimmers would accompany us at all times and no untoward event would chance.

It really sucks being lied to, being dragged into the water head-first and spending a good amount of time there, when you don’t know how to swim..

And, that’s what happened; there was no help for us. There was one guy who kept shouting from the boat, “Why don’t you know how to swim?”, “Come on, swim and catch the boat”, “Swimming is so easy, just try it..” while we trudged and floated in the water like disproportionate rocks. After an eternity of hydro-languish, somehow we barely managed to clutch the boat and the ordeal ended.

Looking back at this, I thought, do we do something similar to our clients?

Clients come to us not just for solutions but as the trends and pundits say, for the experience. But do we think a bit like the boat-man? ‘Man, people don’t understand technology these days!’, ‘He is just not bothered to know how it is done’, ‘That client is technically literate. He is great to work with!’.

The fact remains that client do come to us for the experience, and they may not know how to “swim”. They may not want to learn how to do it either. No matter how silly that might seem to us, as it seemed to the boat-man, we must serve them the perfect experience. The boat-man was the expert in the sea and we depended on him completely, placing our trust that he would rescue us in a world we knew nothing of. But he didn't do it. And guess what… we didn't go for any other ride as we had planned and dissuaded a few tourists from going for that ride too! It’s what we, paying, non-swimmers do! Give us a great experience and we give back our loyalty. The bad experience also gets replied in kind. But the key here is, the boat-man had no idea this even happened. He thought he delivered an excellent service and our money’s worth. We get into a similar situation when we just fail to realize what made our client unhappy. Are we truly taking care of the finer details all the time? Technically, the service agreed on, was the boat ride itself. The agreement for “rescue our drowning selves if anything goes wrong” wasn't made in those words. But was it not expected? As clients, we did expect it.

And our clients are going to expect it too. The assumption that will adversely affect our relationship with them is that they know of the problem that they have come to us for. It’s a bit circularly silly if you think about it. If they knew that much, would they really come to us with it?

Experience is turning big fortunes for enterprises. As we continue to innovate on the perfect experience in the service business, we must attend to the minutest detail that really makes them miss us.