Exceeding customer expectations is always a good thing?

We must be very careful about exceeding customer expectations. Seen from different angles, this sentence may seem strange. We systematically hear that it is good to exceed customer expectations.

Let’s look two examples that can be replicated in several other situations.

An automotive OEM set a 100PPM rejection rate as acceptance criteria. This means that they accept receive a maximum of 100 defective parts in 1 million received from the TIER 1 supplier. If we get systematically a rejection rate of 10PPM, it is a good thing, write? When I present that question, the answers are usually "If we get 10PPM, we exceeded the customer's expectations”. However, from our point of view, at least two aspects are affected. First, we are rejecting 90 parts in every million, for which we had a certain cost, which would be accepted by the customer since the rejection rate is of 100PPM. Then the fact that, if we have an elaborated process that allows us to verify and retain parts so that only 10 parts out of every 1 million are sent to the customer, it is certainly more expensive and will not be paid by the customer. Additionally, that may require more specialized people to perform the process, and that means additional costs during the entire project.

As a second example, we can consider a distribution company that assure a maximum delivery time of 5 days. If on the first delivery you receive the order in 2 days, the second delivery you receive in 1 day and in the third delivery you receive the order in 1 day, what is the expectation when you make the fourth order? It will be certainly around 2 days. However, if you receive the order within 5 days, as always set by the distribution company, you will tend to be frustrated and eventually think that they are not following your order properly. The company has exceeded expectations for the first three orders, may have had an additional effort with an extra cost to deliver within a shorter term, you received the fourth order within the defined period, but at the end they may lose you as a customer due a real loss of satisfaction.

At the end, exceeding expectations must always be analyzed in advance under various prisms and it’s not always a good thing.