Why is managing customer expectations so important to get the best out of your clients?

As a business owner or professional, managing customers' expectations is crucial if you want to make sure your clients?get the best experience from you and your business.

Is it however the only reason why managing expectations is so important? Of course not!

Managing?expectations effectively will help you to:

• ?Reduce drastically the amount of complaints you have
• ?Make sure your clients get all?the benefits from your?offer
• ?Always provide the value you want to provide
• ?Maintain the experience high
• ?Protect your business from threatful customers
• ?Increase your customer retention/loyalty
• ?Get more from them in terms of feedback & recommendations

So why managing expectations would help businesses to reduce the amount of complaints they receive??

The stats say that?more than half?of the complaints businesses are getting are actually coming from the knowledge barrier that there is between the customer and the business.

Which brings us to the real meaning of?managing expectations: managing expectations is about making sure your customers have all needed information related to what you provide, how you provide it, the outcome of what you are providing and what requirements there is from the client's side so you can provide it successfully.

Having an amazing or competitive offer doesn't suffice to make your clients happy and loyal to your brand or even make your business stand out. What you really need is to make sure?your customers?fully enjoy the benefits of what you provide?by making them understand how things work.

Managing expectations will also help you to protect your business from threatful customers. We've all been dealing at least once with?clients complaining about something they shouldn't or unrealistic customers who are becoming out of control. These kind of customers can really represent a threat to your business and it is therefore crucial to protect your business from these threats.

I would definitely be lying if I say that customer service is about making all your customers happy. As not all customers can be made happy. Some will simply never be happy whatever you do while others can even have bad intentions. And you definitely want to know how to handle these customers so they are never hurting your business.

Once you are able to successfully manage your customers' expectations from beginning to end, you can now back yourself up when you are in this kind of situation by using?what you already told your client?previously or what you already discussed with him/her. So you cannot be blamed for something you shouldn't.

What you need to do is ask yourself what you absolutely want your clients to be aware of so you can?write on an email and also say it verbally during a call or a face to face meeting.?

Always remember that a very small percentage of clients are actually reading Terms and Conditions (T&C). You want therefore?to know what information part of these T&C are worth being written in an email and even discussed.?

You also need to think of what information you want to share with all customers and what information?you want to share with?a specific customer depending on the situation.

For instance, if you have a very needy client contacting you 10?times a day, you may want to reiterate both in an email and verbally the fact that you may need up to 24 hours to reply an email and it is therefore better to regroup all information and questions into one.

In any case, managing expectations is not about who is right or who is wrong.?As even if your customer is wrong, the real question to ask yourself is what part of responsibility the business has?in the client being wrong??

Indeed, if a customer is wrong or unrealistic, there is definitely something you could?have done better to avoid that. And this is exactly what you should always ask yourself to avoid similar situations to?happen again and reduce the amount of issues, problems and complaints you have with clients as well as the time you spend on it.

For instance, if a customer is complaining about a deadline being too long to deliver something?as they thought it would take 2 working days, you cannot blame the client for it if you haven't told her/him about this specific?deadline. And in any case, it is never about blaming but about finding a solution and/or give the accurate information to the clients so they can?understand better how things work.?What you need to do in such situations?is explain the client why it takes that much time while keeping the client informed on the progression moving forward. From there, you?definitely want to?make sure you are informing all your?future customers about deadlines.?

As something may seems obvious to you, but does it mean it is obvious for your clients??

Always remember that you are the expert in what you do, but your client is not. So when you ask yourself about what do you want your clients to know, you need to make sure you are taking your client's level of knowledge into consideration.

Seeing your client's perspective based on their level of understanding will definitely help you to give accurate information your clients really need to know and therefore manage expectations more effectively.

So to summarize, here is what you should do to successfully manage your customer's expectations:

• Know what type of expectations your target audience is having with your offer
• Making sure your marketing strategy is aligned with what you offer
• Spend enough time with your customer during the onboarding stage to make sure you understand their needs and perspective
• Give by writing the information you absolutely want your client to be aware of and reiterate it verbally
• Make sure you have a clear idea of your client's level of understanding/knowledge so you can adapt accordingly the information you share
• Set the questions you need to ask every clients to make sure you have all the information you need
• Know your limits in terms of delivery, flexibility and price
• Set your limits accordingly when you need to by having courageous conversations with your customers
• Keep monitoring expectations throughout the whole journey by checking regularly on your customers

Technically, managing expectations is a lot about specific methods each business should have based on their needs that are being applied on a case-by-case basis.

So yes, managing expectations is almost like a "science" that you definitely need to get right. The goal being to?get the best out of your customers in the long-term by making sure they fully enjoy what you provide.?

Need more advice? Feel free to reach out and also check the video I did about managing expectations!