So I recently had an interaction with a company that I am a subscriber to and it got me thinking about one of the most important aspects of customer service.

Managing your customer’s expectations.  I don’t mean that in the way that many people do which is to let someone down gently.  What I mean is that, as a business, you begin establishing expectations with your first interactions with your customers.

Let’s say you are a service provider of some sort and you have on site appointment arrivals that you have to manage.  Very few companies promise arrival inside of an hour because it’s not practical to promise that someone will be able to make house calls exactly on time when you don’t know what the whole day’s schedule will look like.  Imagine if fed ex tried to promise half hour windows where they would deliver your packages inside of.  Not possible.

So when booking with these companies the communication to your customer has to begin to set that expectation from the very beginning.  Words like “Great! We have you in this time-slot.”  and explaining what the time slot means, whether it’s a phone call or an actual arrival window are very necessary to explain to your customer.

Likewise, in other situations where things can be a bit nebulous and hard to nail down it is better to simply explain the process and how long thing’s might take on the higher end rather than give a customer the impression that it could happen relatively soon.  If I’m waiting on a permit to change a street sign or something like that then I want someone to detail to me the process and potential pitfalls of the product and give me a worse case estimate to help me understand when I need to contact them if I haven’t received my order/product/service yet.

Most companies will find more amicable customers ready to agree to wait a longer time when they are signing up for a product or service rather than asking people who have waited a period of time to wait longer.  The first rule of customer service in my book is always: Set proper expectations!