Expectation Management and the Art of Customer Service

On the weekend, my wife and I go out for a leisurely breakfast in one of the many coffee places nearby. Being a weekend, we tend to sleep in, take our time and in general are very late for breakfast. By the time we finally decided on where to go, leave the house, drive to the coffee place, park and reach the actual place where we intend to have breakfast, it is sometimes already noon. On that specific weekend, we reached at 12:05, to be precise.

Now, I am a “breakfast” person. My definition of breakfast is coffee, eggs (scrambled, poached, fried – I am not particular here), maybe salmon or cheese alongside some toast. This is what I consider breakfast food, and this is what I am looking forward to when I go out to eat on a Saturday morning. (Yes, I know - I still need to be more localised)

So we reach our coffee place, and there is a big board on the wall, with the food items available. One column says “Breakfast: 09:00 – 12:00” with a list of options perfectly suited for my breakfast appetite. The column next to it states “Lunch: from 12:00 noon”, with items such as burger, pasta and salad.

I obviously am hopefully that – despite it being slightly after noon – the place could still provide me with one of their breakfast options. So my wife heads over to the counter to order, while I reserve the last available seat outside. There is a decent queue at the counter, and after waiting for what seems to be an eternity, I see her talking to the person behind the counter.

Unfortunatly, I see him shaking his head, pointing to the clock and to the board behind him. My wife looks at me, sees my disappointment (I really don’t want to start my day with lunch…) and continues to discuss with the person behind the counter. To his credit, he even goes to the kitchen to enquire whether they could cook up some breakfast for me (instead of burgers or pasta) – but his request falls on deaf ears. The argument of my wife that she was here at 12:00 (ok, that’s slightly exaggerated), and waited for a long time due to the long queue, and because of this she ordered after the “cut-off time”, also does not help. Nothing helps. Breakfast food is simply no longer an option.

To a certain extent I already anticipated this. I observed three other people in the queue in front of my wife, each of them apparently ordering breakfast items, each of them encountering a shaking head of the person behind the counter, each of them rejected. I guess they just took the rejection easier, and found an alternative option on the lunch menu they settled on. But I could see the disappointment on their faces nonetheless. My wife, conceding defeat, finally orders something on the lunch menu and returns to join me at the table, while I decide to just have a coffee and a beef sandwich (which is good - don't get me wrong. It's just not what I was looking forward to.)

And that brings me to the topic of expectation management and improving customer service. You could say that the coffee shop did nothing wrong: after all, we did order after 12:00 (even ever so slightly) and it says on the big board that breakfast is until 12:00 only. But we were in the queue, assuming that the timing is slightly flexible, and that at 12:05 we surely would be able to still order items on the breakfast menu. And it was only after we waited in the queue patiently for another 5+ minutes that we were able to order, and only then the person at the counter told us that this is not an available option any more.

So, what could they have done better? 

In a situation where you have a “hard” line between breakfast and lunch items, because the kitchen needs to change their production environment, you may want to consider to give some warning to your waiting customers to manage expectations.

Let’s take an example: On vacations, we usually stay in nice hotels who have really great breakfast buffets. (As you can see, I do love breakfast…). Those buffets close at 10:30, sometimes 11:00 as they need to make place for lunch. If you come late, you have to hurry up. In such instances, and in hotels with great customer service, the staff will go to the individual tables and inform the eating guests that the buffet will close soon, and should you want more food, than you should go quickly and help yourself before the buffet closes.

Hotels with less fantastic service just have a few waiters coming out of from the kitchen at exactly the designated time (sometimes 5 minutes earlier), and within seconds (or so it seems) the place is cleared of any previously available food items. Again, without any warning you will feel disappointed, even though you really can’t fault the staff. After all –  “breakfast is served until 10:30” – and if it is 10:31, and the buffet is cleared up, you can’t complain. But while you finish your plate you can’t help thinking that they should have given you a warning, as you really wouldn’t have minded another muffin, or another helping of the porridge. There is a nagging feeling of disappointment, even though “you should have known”.

Here is an example on how to do it better:

One of my favourite restaurants is an always packed family eatery. They have Happy Hour until 7pm, where drinks are discounted. If we are there for Happy Hour drinks, without fail one of the waiters will approach us shortly before 7pm to warn us of the end of Happy Hour, and to give us a chance to pre-order more drinks, taking advantage of Happy Hour prices. Later in the night there is a big noise from a bell, and the waiters will inform the patrons in the restaurant that the kitchen will close with a “Last Call for Food”. People are  - in advance – being made aware to changes of available options. 

And that is the difference between good customer service and great customer service: Giving advance notice to the customer, and thus managing expectations early and properly. 

Coming back to my weekend breakfast experience: If we would have known for sure that there are no more breakfast options available as soon as we stepped into the coffee place, our disappointment would have been significantly less, compared to being informed about this after waiting in the queue for quite a while. We hoped that the timing on the board might be a “soft” line, and that 10 minutes more or less would not make a difference. After all, we are not talking about a plane leaving on time, but about a restaurant no longer providing food items that 15 minutes earlier were still available, just because an arbitrary time point has been reached. As a matter of fact, the waiter later told us that sometimes breakfast options close as early as 11:45, because the kitchen decided to change over to the lunch menu slightly earlier. I reckon that every weekend there will be a number of patrons that might just end up slightly disappointed.

This is what they could have done: 

Take a small (but visible) sign that can be put on or near the countertop. A sign that states “Serving Breakfast Now”. As soon as the kitchen decides that breakfast time is over, and lunch time starts, the sign on the counter can be changed to “Serving Lunch Now”.  

With this, people that enter the coffee immediately see from which menu they will have to order, without having to resort to hope that they could convince the person behind the counter to provide them with an item not available any more (or not yet, in the event a lunch-hungry crowd shows up at 11:50….).

In this case expectation are better managed from the very beginning. We wouldn’t have waited (me on the table, reserving the place, and my wife in the queue, waiting for her turn) with the thought that most probably we still can order scrambled eggs even though it was already slightly after 12:00 noon.

Seeing a sign “Serving Lunch Now” immediately upon entering the restaurant would have made it clear to us that the option of scrambled eggs is simply no longer available. We would have then been mentally prepared for what are possible options instead, and our disappointment would less. After all, we did come in after 12:00 noon, so we really can’t blame the people working in the restaurant. 

What are the takeaways for your business? 

1.     Successful growing business deliver (ideally always) within customer expectations.

Put another way: Customers expect a certain service / product quality / etc. from the company, and great companies will deliver exactly on this expectation. We often hear “we exceed your expectations” from company mission statements. I believe this is absolute nonsense. Yes, every once in a while, there will be occasions where the customer expectations is significantly below what is delivered by your product or service. However, this are exceptions, and clearly not the rule. Customer’s expectations have and always will be higher than what you might be prepared to give – so it is your responsibility to manage those expectations accordingly. 

A great example is McDonalds. I have yet to hear from anyone eating at MacD that the food exceeded their expectations. Nobody even comes out to say that the food is fantastic. Without wanting to talk down on McDonalds, but the burgers are really simple. What they are though, is consistent. If you go to a McDonalds, you know what to expect. And that is exactly what they deliver – every time, every where. And that makes McDonals a billion dollar enterprise – the ability to practically always and everywhere deliver as per customer expectations. 

2.     Expectations can (and should be) managed

You cannot control what a new customer expects from you. Like in a courtship, the other party wants to find out more about who you are, and what you can do for them before they commit to a relationship. For a successful lasting relationship (be it business or personal) I believe it is critical that both parties are clear what the other party can and will do for them. Simple example: If you engage us for a project, and I know it will take us 4 weeks to deliver what you want, I will tell you that we need 4-5 weeks to get the job done. You may want it done in two weeks, but it is my responsibility to convince you that this is unreasonable and manage your expectation accordingly. If we then deliver as per our internal calculation, we meet your (revised) expectation (which we helped to manage), and – even though you originally wanted in in two weeks – you will be happy. And should we be able to deliver for whatever reason in three weeks instead of the promised four, we have actually succeeded in exceeding your expectations – thus making you most probably an elated customer who is happy to refer us to his friends…

The same is true for unforeseen circumstances during a project execution. If you know that you won’t be able to deliver the project on time as originally planned, I advise you to inform the client as soon as possible with the reasons for delay, your action items to catch up on the delay, and the revised time plan to manage his / her expectations again.

In contrast to what your wife / husband tells you what to do for her birthday (“Just surprise me!”), in business people really don’t like surprises.  At all. We hate them. We want to be very clear what to expect, and then we want you to deliver on those expectations. And in time of uncertainty, please don’t let us wait until the last minute to destroy the hope that we might have formed in the meanwhile. 

If you come clean early and clearly about what you can do, and what you cannot do, you are able to set the expectations of your customers in line with your ability to deliver. And thus your customer gets exactly what she expects in terms of product or service. And the ability to (consistently !)  meet and possibly occasionally exceed the expectations of your customer is a key point for a successful growing business.

Coming back to my weekend and the late breakfast: the people in the kitchen eventually agreed to scramble some eggs and serve it together with my lunch menu (a beef sandwich) – so ended up with eggs, coffee and bread after all. 

Enjoy your weekend!