What is customer expectation?

We can define customer expectation as the needs and feelings that customers have with respect to a  product or service. This expectation is formed by hearing or reading the information concerning the product or a brand, seeing other people’s sentiment towards a product, past experience with the company, etc.

In this article, we shall look at the ways to enhance customer experience & retention by bridging the gap between expectation and reality.

Is it important to manage customer expectations?

Obviously, yes! 

If you wish to successfully launch an independent business, you need a wide potential audience. And to reach your potential audience, you would require positive fund flow, brand engagement, and customer retention. 

Hence, you have to find people who are more likely to purchase your product or service, attract new customers by providing value, and you must also retain the existing customers by delivering on that promise. In order to find leads for your business, you can make use of lead generation services in the Philippines. They are experts in finding and attracting potential customers, executing different lead generation strategies, and finally converting them into sales. They also make sure to continuously provide good customer experience to ensure customer retention rate.

By managing your customer expectations you set the bar higher enough that your customers or clients are willing to consider you and feel satisfied when reality meets their needs.

Understand Your Customer’s Expectations From You

Until you know what is it that your customers want, you cannot meet their expectations. The generic need of every customer from any brand is great customer service, good brand experience, and a streamlined purchase process.

However, apart from these generic expectations, you need to get more specific. 

Ask Your Customers

You can ask your customers directly what they want. There are many survey tools available that will make your finding easy and quicker.

Here are some basic tips to keep in mind before conducting a survey;

• Ensure that your questions are short and simple
• Use open-ended questions

One of the best and most used ways to measure the customer experience is to ask every customer a basic question: on a scale of 1-10, how was their experience with your company. 

Try to Understand Where You are Failing to Meet the Expectations

When you get enough information on your client’s expectations and their feedback about your company, service, or product, it’s crucial to analyze the data and understand where you are lagging behind in meeting the customer’s expectations.

When you perform the analysis, you would understand which areas of your business aren’t meeting the standards of your customers.

Make use of the Google Analytics report to understand which page or sections of your site encounter maximum bounce rates, maximum page exits, pages with low engagement, etc.

Now that you know what your customers are expecting from you, and the areas in your business that require improvement, the next thing to get your hands onto is to optimize these areas and improve them to meet your customer’s expectations.

You can’t incorporate all the optimization measures at once. You may need to conduct a few rounds of testing so as to improve our business to a smaller extent.

The other way to close the gap between customer expectation and reality is by being honest. Yes, you must ensure that what you promise to offer is what your customers are getting. 

When you are honest, the no. of complaints, dissatisfaction gets reduced.