What do your customers expect?

You must know what your customers want and need in order to provide the products and services that will keep them loyal to your company.  Similarly, you must know what their expectations are about your company in order to make sure you provide services and products that exceed those expectations. For example, it is probably vital to a customer that the sidewalk treatment you provide to him melts the snow and ice from his property so his customers don't slip.  However, he may not care whether the product is pink or blue. His expectation revolves only around the product's performance, not its appearance.

Compare that to the customer who is purchasing a baby item from your company. The color may be vitally important as it is considered gauche to give a blue gift to a couple who has recently welcomed a baby girl into their family.

You may know intuitively which features of your product or service are the most important.  If not, ask your customers and spend some time looking at your competitors.  Do any of the companies in your industry make promises about certain features of a product?  In some cases, the promises revolve around traits that most customers would agree are important.  For example, a laundry product might advertise that it keeps colors brighter than other brands.   There may be a money-back guarantee for customers who don't agree. Alternatively, the company may challenge customers to find another brand that keeps their clothes more brightly colored. 

In any case, there is an expectation based on that promise, that colors will remain bright through many washings in that brand of laundry detergent. If you are a maker of laundry detergent, you might therefore infer that color-fastness is an important expectation your customers have.  Concentrating your research and development efforts around color-fastness might then be a good plan if you hope to keep your customers satisfied with your product.  

In many cases, however, the expectation set by one brand's marketing promise is simply arbitrary because it is something that particular company does well. Unfortunately, once one company sets an expectation, customers may believe that all brands should comply with that same standard.  In the laundry example, by guaranteeing color-fastness, your competitor is implying that bright colors are the one and only standard by which laundry products ought to be judged.  It is up to you, then, to manage consumers' expectations by differentiating your product along a different parameter if necessary.

If, despite your best efforts,you cannot compete with the other brand on color-fastness, you then need to help your customers develop a different expectation from your brand.  Perhaps you will make your product more environmentally friendly than the competitor. Maybe you will package it in a container that has an easy-pour spout to make it more convenient to use.  Use your marketing channels to point out the features that make your product unique if you can't compete on the basis of the expectation set by others in your industry.

In some cases, there is no way around the expectation set by others. For example, if you are a cellular service provider, your customers have a right to expect that their calls will not be dropped.  You can't get around that by offering better ring tones or by making your phones more physically attractive.  Keeping calls from dropping is a minimum expectation that simply must be met. 

In the real world, we all know that some calls will be dropped sometimes, and that 100% call success is a goal that is not totally achievable with current technology.  You can then use percentages to show that your brand works better than others by pointing out that only 1% of calls on your network are dropped while 5% of calls on Network X are lost.  By doing this, you manage the customer's expectations.  You set the bar at 99%,rather than at 100%.  For any specific customer who does not lose 1% of his calls, you have exceeded the expectation you helped him to set, and the customer remains satisfied. 

Network X's customers, who have also seen your commercials and know that 99% is achievable, remained dissatisfied because they are losing as many as 5% of their calls.  All other things being equal, this should cause your market share to go up, and Network X's share to go down, even though you have not changed even one thing in your operations.

Which expectations are important?

Your customers may have expectations about many things, but some of them may not really matter, while others are huge.  For example, if a construction company is installing your wallpaper in new homes, they have a right to expect that the wallpaper will be the correct pattern and size that was ordered, that it will stick to the walls, and that it will be delivered on time.  They may also expect that it will come in brown cardboard boxes, but it won't matter to them if it comes in plastic bags instead.  That's a simplistic example, but it makes an important point.  It's not enough to just say you are exceeding expectations; you must exceed the right expectations.