Failing to measure up

A friend and I recently discussed the emotions that result when the outcome in a scenario doesn’t meet expectations. We’ve all been there… your meal isn’t as delicious as you hoped, your oil change took longer than expected, or the plumber’s charge was substantially higher than you planned. Regardless of the scenario, you’re usually left disappointed or, worse, angry.

Nerdy marketing people (like Sarah of the e-team) like to dig in and quantify the difference—or gap—between a person’s expectations and the perceived level of what was actually received (sometimes called the Gap Model of Service Quality or Gap Theory). There is such a thing as a positive gap (when expectations are exceeded), but all too often you only hear about the negative gaps.

In general, any negative gaps between what clients expect to get and what they perceived they actually got usually boil down to a failure in communication. Maybe they failed to ask the right questions or you failed to provide enough information. Or maybe another company in your industry communicated something wrong or incorrectly to your clients—without you even being aware—that helped to misshape their expectations.

The takeaway here is to simply take a moment to study up on what’s influencing your customers’ expectations and ensure that you and your employees are doing all you can to establish accurate expectations before you find yourself caught in a situation where you failed to measure up.