Speaker 1: Want to exceed your customer's expectations? Well, in this video, we break down 11 tips on how to do just that. Hi, I'm JB with Marketing 360, and we help small businesses grow with our marketing and design talent technology through our number one marketing platform, Marketing 360. We call marketing and design MAD, and we love MAD. Hopefully, these videos will help you fall in love with MAD too. So make sure to follow us to learn tips, tricks, and strategies to grow your business and fuel your brand. So managing your customer's expectations is key to success. But in order to do that, you need to understand what those expectations are. So let's talk about six reasons why it's important to really understand those expectations up front, and then talk about five reasons about how you can exceed and manage to those expectations after that. So tip number one in terms of understanding the reasoning behind why it's important to set up the expectation upfront is so that you truly understand what the customer's expectation is with regards to service and your product in the beginning. Not all customers are created equal, and therefore, they don't all have the same expectations. The expectations of one customer might be different than another. So it's important to talk about that up front so that you know what's important to the customer. The customer thinks a lot of different things are important, and maybe they only care about one aspect about what you do and not so much the rest. And so you're going to want to put focus on that. So that's why it's important up front to ask what their expectations are with the service and with the product that you provide so that you know in stone what you need to target. So the second reason why it's important to understand expectations up front is it allows not just yourself, but your entire team to fulfill upon those expectations. One tip here is to make sure that you have this information saved somewhere, typically being your CRM in terms of a note of some kind as to what their expectation is so that you and your team knows exactly what to focus on for that particular customer. Reason three for understanding expectations up front and why that's important is so that you can set expectations properly should they be off alignment a little bit. Sometimes customers may have this preconceived notion of something about your company or your product or your service that isn't necessarily accurate. And so by talking about it up front, you're able to quickly align with what the vision is moving forward to make sure you're on the same page and expectations are correctly set before they get off the track down the road. Reason number four on why it's important to understand expectations up front is it gives you some insights into the particular needs of the customer that may not have been addressed during the sales process. A lot of times customers come on board and you think they're interested in one thing, when in reality, maybe they're interested in that thing plus a couple other things that were never discussed. So actually, it can be a good thing in terms of increasing upsellability. A lot of times somebody will have these expectations, but maybe what they purchased wasn't necessarily for those things. So it gives you an opportunity to upsell and also combat potential complaints that would have happened down the road right up front before those fires get burning. Reason five on why it's important to understand these expectations up front is it could give you some insights into some additional products and services that you could potentially provide. Maybe a lot of people are bringing up certain pieces that you don't necessarily do, but you could do with some small tweaks to your process, some small tweaks to your product or service. So this can give you some insights on how to better lay out the strategy with regards to your sales process and your product after it's sold, so that you can have a better experience, but also potentially increase your revenue with some additional product add-ons that folks may be requesting, wanting, and needing. And finally, the sixth reason on why it's important to understand expectations up front is it will give you some insights in how to wow these people. The key is to not just meet the expectation, but to exceed it. So listen between the lines and think about how you can not only deliver to them exactly what they want, but maybe one layer more, so that they're truly wowed about the experience. They stay with you longer, they spend more, and they refer your friends, and that's gonna be key to success. So let's talk about five tips now on how you can do that, how you can exceed and wow your customers and their expectations, and manage those expectations to perfection with you and your team. Tip number one is to be super proactive. So if anything is looking like it's not going to meet their expectation, you need to instantly communicate that to the customer. So if the deadline's gonna get pushed back, call them right away, be up front with it, talk about it right away before it even takes a minute longer on your schedule, right? Get on that, put that top priority, right? If the product didn't get delivered in the correct way, if there was some kind of an issue, if there was something missing, if there was a quality issue, you wanna be ahead of it. Ideally, you wanna find this information out before the customer and communicate that to them. What we found, if you're proactive and you're honest and you contact the customer in advance and say, hey, here's the deal, this is what happened, I'm on it. Typically, what they want is just to know that you know about it, you're working on it, and you have a strategy to improve upon it. If you communicate those things, it actually can be an opportunity to earn additional trust. And even though you didn't meet their expectation for that one particular piece, the fact that you proactively communicated to them sort of exceeds expectations to what they normally receive in the general world of business. So you can step outside the lines in these opportunities to become an excellent customer service provider and win their trust. Tip number two, if the customer has an issue and actually does end up contacting you first with some kind of a complaint, one key here is to listen and let them vent. Don't cut them off, let them talk, let them run through it. Sometimes they'll talk for 10, 20, 30, 45 minutes straight before you even say a word, and that's totally fine. Let them finish venting, then cushion, respond with some empathy towards their situation and their complaint. Then really, you wanna reiterate and clarify what they've said. Make sure that you heard it and understand it, and they feel good about that you've listened and you've heard that. And then present a solution to them. If you can present a solution and a strategy at that point, typically letting them talk kind of vents them out. Clarifying the problem helps them feel that you've understood what their problem is, and then now that you've delivered to them a strategy, you've taken them from really a critical moment to a more compelling and compassionate and stronger moment where they feel comfortable about you and your brand. And the fact that you listened to let them voice their concerns, and now you have a real solution in place. But the key here is, when you come back with the plan, you need to make sure you execute. Cuz if you don't execute on that plan and it becomes an issue a second time, now you're gonna have a problem. Tip number three would be to follow up after you come up with this action plan with a gift card or a handwritten note. This is gonna be huge cuz it's like, hey, you listened to their concerns, you came up with a strategy, you're on it. You follow up with a bullet list of what the strategy is so it's in writing. And then you also send them a handwritten note or a quick gift to Starbucks or something. This is just to say, hey, I'm sorry, but that that happened to you. I'm on your side, I'm on this, here's the plan, here's a gift card for the hassle, and we're gonna get this thing done. This is gonna completely bring them back to a place of confidence about you and your brand. And it's probably might even get you a couple referrals where they say, hey, this company is a company you wanna work with. Cuz even when they have a few things that they miss or make a mistake, they really make it right, and there's not a lot of businesses that do that. So think about that in terms of your process and how you can put that in place. Tip number four is ask for help. So if you have a situation that you need help on, you have teammates that have some additional bandwidth or just some knowledge about how to overcome these situations. Don't try to deal with it yourself. Ask for the help, ask for teammates, even search on Google. Look for other ideas and strategies that you can identify with and find to help the customer find the results they're looking for. Maybe it's even something that they want that you don't do that came up along the way, but you know somebody who does, or you have a partner that you work with that can help provide that service. You can provide that connection, right? You can say, hey, so and so, this is a customer we work with, they're looking for this. You do a great job, I'd love to connect you guys. Just anything you can do to exceed expectations, go kinda outside of the service box and provide solutions to your customers. Even if it's not solutions that you provide, is gonna be hugely valuable in building that relationship and building that trust now and in the future. Tip five, last tip, is to have these understandings of these pivot points in your process, right? You typically, throughout your process of working with your customers, you have these critical moments where you typically see potential issues, right? Maybe it's two weeks after you do business with somebody, you typically have these concerns. Maybe four weeks in, you have those concerns. Maybe when you ship your product, sometimes these are concerns that you have. Think about those typical critical moments in your process where these concerns could potentially arise and be proactive in how you combat those things. We call it pivot points where it's like, hey, if this particular situation actually ends up happening to this customer, here's what we do. We're gonna send them a gift card, we're gonna do this, we're gonna give them this thing free, whatever that might be. Have these little moments of wowing of the customer in your process pre-built in, so that you can be ahead of it. Ideally, you're gonna wanna have these things built in so that you're exceeding the expectations. So think about the typical expectation of your customer, what they're expecting. And then don't tell them this, but in your background scenes with your service, have these different little wow moments built in to where maybe you set the expectation something will be done in two weeks, but you and your whole company knows it's usually done in a week. That way, the customer's expecting this to be done in two weeks, you call them in a week and say, hey, this is done. And that's really just part of your standard process, but it's exceeding the expectations that you set initially. And this can be, you can think about millions of different scenarios that work within your product and your team, where you can have these little gifts and these little wow moments throughout the process. It's gonna build a lot of rapport. It's gonna increase your upsellability, and it's gonna increase your referral business. So definitely think about how you can do this and implement these things into your process. So bonus tip of the day is to have a good CRM that works for your company that you can build your business on, that has these different pieces of information in it. Maybe a field for what's their expectation, maybe a field for how do we exceed this expectation built into your CRM. And maybe even different pieces of your process when you reach these different stages, there's a wow moment where it sends them a gift card or sends them a note or does things that really exceed their expectations. If you build this into your CRM, you have a scalable solution for your business that keeps you organized, not just for yourself, but for your entire team. That's gonna help you exceed customer expectations as a whole, which is also gonna increase your sales. So if you liked the video, like it, smash that like button, leave a comment if you have additional tips and ideas. Follow us for more content like this in the future and happy marketing.