Cultural differences

Being a customer with a south European supplier, I reflect on the differences between him and me when we discuss satisfaction. “J”, let’s call him that, and I have often completely different mindset in a discussion. When I express a concern and want to point out a high expectation as I have not any record of performance within the specific topic, he takes it as complaints of his performance and get insulted. It is of course a matter of how I formulate my message, but even after consciously altering and testing different approaches, the result is still the same.

Do you see a cultural difference in the way to interpret satisfaction related to the expectation and performance?

Meeting expectations

Well, here I go! First blog ever... Talk about expectations!

Keeping focus on customer experience, there are different perspectives of a customer. Me as a customer, the customers of the company where I work, and my own customers, to cover a few. They are all individual at the end, even if we tend to group them. Even within the segmentation we make at our company today, the customer types vary a lot even within each family. Which expectations are we searching to meet or top?

Todays' session covered expectations, which from time to time has been mentioned as "expectation management" in situations I've been, at least when something "not to good" is about to be communicated or delivered. Do you recognize the phrase?

My previous manager always sad "Under promise, over deliver", which is a way to make sure your odds are on your side and manage both the expectations and performance. It only goes when you are in control of the promise, right? And you still need to deliver.

It takes some guts to promise and perform, but it is the way to develop and push yourself and an organization to greater customer experience.

Did I meet the expectations of my first blog? Yes, if you ask me. I feel more comfortable blogging after this first one.