thinks

I started my career in show business, which also means I waited tables a fair bit. I learned valuable lessons from each about satisfying customers. Entertainment audiences want to be surprised. They want to see something they’ve never seen before. Customers of a business, by contrast, simply want you to meet their expectations. They don’t want to be surprised, unless those surprises are really, really good ones.

Seth Godin notes how the expectations you create often lead to disappointment and how important it is to match the expectations you create to the experience you deliver. A colleague of mine coined a term that illustrates the risks of failing to meet heightened expectations. He calls it “antici-pointment”. When a customer has heightened expectations, the failure to deliver on those expectations hits much harder.

As “The Sopranos” completed its storyline Sunday night (or didn’t, depending on your point of view), it disappointed a great many among its audience. * In film and television, though, that’s not always a bad thing. Great art takes risks that may disappoint its audience. The art of great service requires that any surprises delight the customer, every time.

Thanks to Fred Wilson, BTW, for a couple of really useful links. He never fails to meet my expectations.

The Sopranos Finale capsule review - I disagree with the folks who didn’t care for the ending. I thought the final scene was a brilliant example of how a guy can spend his life looking over his shoulder to have it either amount to nothing or to have everything go dark in an instant.

Seth Godin clearly has food on his mind lately. First it was waiters, now this. And he’s dead on the money. I waited tables through high school and college, and still think of it as the best customer service training I ever received. Customers in restaurants know what they want, even when they’re uncomfortable communicating what it is. The beauty of the system is its immediate feedback. Waiters who meet their customers’ expectations get good tips; poor waiters wonder why they get the “bad tables,” the ones who tip so little. As I mentioned earlier, you should celebrate great customer service experiences, wherever you find them. Consider what you say the tip you leave behind.

My wife got me John Berendt’s very engaging “The City of Falling Angels” for Christmas. The book discusses the political and social realities in Venice as seen through the eyes of a number of Venetians. I’ve only finished a handful of chapters so far, but the book fascinated me with the example of Archimede Seguso, an octogenarian glassblower who has created truly remarkable vases and glass figures for the last seventy years. According to Berendt, “Archimede was the twenty-first generation and one of the greatest of them all” (emphasis mine). In other words, this man, representing a family (brand) with a 600-year tradition of excellence, continued to push for improvements in his family’s art (product). And succeeded. Berendt continues, “He was the first glassmaker…with an exhibition in the Doge’s Palace in St. Mark’s Square. Tiffany sold his pieces in its Fifth Avenue store.” Not too shabby.

Separately, Nick Rice recently talked about Auto Alternative, who provided customer service that went above and beyond most consumers’ typical expectations. My local brew pub is my favorite place to eat, not because they offer an excellent menu (which they do), but because they seem genuinely glad when I walk through the door and demonstrate their appreciation throughout each of my visits.

The common thread is businesses (artists, craftsmen, whatever) that insist on exceeding their customers’ expectations.

Now that the holiday season is over, it’s easy to talk about companies that created poor customer service experiences. So don’t. Whether it’s on your own blog or in the comments here or just among your friends, share these examples and any others you can find. It’s time to stop bitching about companies that do it poorly and start celebrating the ones that do it right. Customer service is not dead. Ignore the companies that fail to deliver and they’ll go away. Make 2007 the year you raise the bar for your expectations, the expectations of your customers, and the expectations of everyone you know.