Meet Vs. Exceed Customer Expectations: The Latter Is Always Better?

What is important, meeting customer expectations or exceeding customer expectations? Originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

This is an interesting question. My view on whether meeting customer expectation is more important or exceeding customer expectations, is:

Both are important because:

Meeting Customer Expectation

Firstly, one has to definitely – meet customer expectation for a customer to be interested and buy a product/service from you (your company) to begin with. The customer would be satisfied if his/her experience is that – the said product/service /promises- meet his/her expectation. This a minimum requirement for a customer. 

For e.g.: Offering “quality” service /products is a minimum requirement. If customer needs training on a subject – well qualified and good communication from faculty and great content is a must.

Exceeding Customer Expectation

The experience of “exceeding” customer expectation comes when the customer “experiences” something beyond his/her expectation. There are 2 aspects when it can happen:

• This could be the key differentiation between a company and its competition. As when a customer decides to buy a product/service, he/she may decide to buy that from the company that exceeds his /her expectation. For e.g.: If customer needs training on a subject, besides giving quality faculty and content – if company offers a complimentary [related to subject] short course or a limited period one on one interaction with faculty even after the completion of the course – then that may push the customer to buy from this company.
• Exceeding expectation -can also happen after a customer buys a product/service – and then experiences / receives something beyond expectations. For e.g.: If customer buys a product/service and get a valuable gift [something that matters or is value to the customer] along with that. e.g.: – Customer buys books online or from a store- and gets 2 complimentary books.

Exceeding Customer Expectations

It is the key to keep the customer loyalty, making your brand stronger and getting good feedback and referrals and thus more business.

The Important Things Are Also the Company

It “consistently” meets and exceeds customer expectation and it should not be a one off experience for customer.

Contributed by Roopali Kurve, Exec Coach,Mentor, Advisor- Business Strategy, Learn&Develop