Hey, Marianne DeNovellis here with the Six Figure Mastermind. Welcome back. Today
we're going to talk about how important it is to exceed customer expectations
especially in growing your business so stay tuned and check it out.
So you've got customers, you got an influx of clients and now
it's time to figure out how to exceed their expectations. Let's just shoot
straight here. As consumers, we are growing more and more accustomed to the
customer's always right and even beyond that. Think about when you go out and you
have a customer retail experience, you have an expectation of what that should
look like. If you need to make a return, you expect this company to go above and
beyond for you, right? You would expect them to accept your return, you expect
cash back in the form of payment. You know, you have a lot of
expectations so you've got to as an entrepreneur be thinking about what the
customers experience is already in your field and then your job as an
entrepreneur is to innovate above and beyond that so with these customers
expectations, the high expectations of the past are now the new normal. So how
do we rise above and beyond? It's time to stick out and do something different and
you want to do it in a way that won't cripple your business. If you do it right,
not only will it not cripple your business but it will actually grow your
business on top of that. One of the ways to do this, to exceed customer
expectations is to do add-ons, to make free add-ons. Free add-ons could be a
warranty on your product, a free add-on could be a bonus gift, a free add-on
could be a birthday card in the mail. When you exceed customer expectations,
you're basically doing more than you said you would do in adding value to the
customers experience. Now it doesn't have to cost you much extra, you don't have to
go into a loss to exceed those customer expectations, you don't have to take a
hit on your bottom line, to take to get those customer
expectations and provide a unique experience for them. What you do need to
do is know your customer well enough to know it benefit them and know how that
would be exceeded so put yourself in your customers shoes. If you're in a
retail establishment like walk around to the other side of the counter and
experience where your customer is experiencing. I call this anticipatory
service. Let's for a moment put ourselves in the restaurant industry and by the
way, I think everyone on this planet should take a least a 2-week
period and work a job as a server because I got to tell you,
servers are some of the most underappreciated people and their
bussers are some of the most underappreciated people in the
commercial industry. You know I worked for a long time as a server and you're
hauling drinks back and forth, you're burning your hands on hot dishes and
people can generally as a consumer, we can get so flustered over the smallest
thing in our meal being, you know, we had chicken instead of shrimp or we had
romaine instead of iceberg or whatever it is you know, there are
legitimate things to you know, make your voice heard about when you're a customer
and that establishment but oftentimes, it's over these little things and as a
server, they can take a lot of hit for us. I'm just like putting that out there,
take two weeks and go work as a server or a busboy in a restaurant and see the
other side of the coin. I bring up that example because anticipatory service can
come so easily described in this scenario. So let's take for example you
go to a fast food restaurant that serves sandwiches on demand, somewhere like
subway or blimpy or whatever other sandwich places exists out there. You
have a certain level of expectation at those restaurants, you expect the table
to be wiped off that you see that, you expect the
food to be up to par, you expect the tomatoes not to be frozen, you expect the
drink fountain to be fully stocked and to have their drinks, you expect you know,
to for the windows to be clean, those are our baseline expectations. So if you
were the manager, what could you do that was above and beyond for the customers
experience? What could you do at the table? You could maybe have the
nutritional information at the table, some restaurants will actually go above
and beyond and have servers come to the table even if they're a fast food
establishment and say hey, can I fill your drinks for you? Or hey, I noticed you
that you had a two subway cards, do you want me to combine those for you?
It's anticipatory service, is asking and anticipating what the customer would
like before they have to ask for it. Now let's take
from a fast food all the way up to ultra fine dining.
You have different expectations at that fine-dining establishment that you do at
the fast food place. At the fine dining is a bit let's say, top part like Five
Diamond eating place restaurant, you can tell my vocabulary is like super good
for this restaurant, right? So you go to this restaurant and if you ever have the
chance to do this, I would suggest you have this experience too. Go to this
restaurant and this is the place where the server's like take the napkin and
they put it on your lap for you and you almost feel like an
invalid because they do all of the things for you where they'd start sort of like
feeding you your food, they you pour your wine for you and and they'll screw you
in your chair and like I have never seen any place that wipes your mouth but
maybe they do, I don't know. Anticipatory service in this establishment would be
going above and beyond and getting a hold of your clients ahead of time and
finding out if they have any food allergies and clearing the kitchen of
all those allergens before you came that night or it could be you know, what is
the recipe that your mother cooked for you when you were 8 years old and we're
going to get that a recipe to our chefs and they're going to cook that for you. My
husband and I were up in a restaurant called La Caille, which is a very, it's a
destination restaurant, it's almost you can't get there unless you already know
where it is and they even if this restaurant have like an overnight
cottage where they'll cook the food and then serve it to your cottage of this
little honeymoon suite with a hot tub, it's super super nice, people have
weddings up there all the time. Beautiful cottage and before we went to
La Caille, my husband actually called the chef and said hey, we want something off
menu tonight, we want you to express your creativity, we don't have any food
allergies but we would love to have an experience tonight that's definitely
made by a true craftsman such as yourself. So before we got there, the chef
had created a brand new dish for us, he just let his imagination run wild, he
created this beautiful plate, had written in chocolate "Happy Anniversary"
and had served it to us and it was like this just over the top like, they
thought of things that I didn't even think of as the customer. Totally went
above and beyond my expectations because my expectations were this big and their
abilities were this big. So if your abilities are greater than your what
your customer knows, dive into those and leverage those to enhance your
customer experience so they keep coming back to you and so that you stick out
from the crowd. Remember the details, get involved in the
tales. Walt Disney said the magic is in the details. Follow up with your clients,
not just with surveys but with thank you. Express gratitude to them and your
clients are sure to have an amazing experience and keep coming back to you.
Okay, well I hope you enjoyed the video and I'm curious, what are your favorite
ways to go above and beyond and have that anticipatory service that we talked about
in your customer experiences. So leave us a comment below.
I'm super curious. Let's all mastermind ways to improve our business right.
Hit the subscribe button. I'll see you guys tomorrow.