Customers are the lifeblood of any business. A business without a reasonable customer base is likely to fail.

When you create a valuable product that customers are willing to pay for, it is super important that you deliver the service in ways that are satisfying to the customer. 

Report by the Microsoft team highlighted that 54% of all consumers say that they have higher customer service expectations than they did just one year ago. This implies that customers always have higher expectations of businesses.

So how do you deliver your service to tally with your customers’ expectations or even do better? First, you have to know what they expect, then you can deliver your service to suit their expectations.

In this post, you’ll learn the 5 things that your customers expect in your service delivery.

1. Understand Their Needs

Your customers expect you to understand their needs. Most times, customers come to you because they feel you have the solution to their problem. 

So when they engage with you for a purchase, they want you to show that you understand their need, even beyond what they know, that way, they feel comfortable trusting you with their money.

Customers get frustrated when there is no alignment in what they expect and what’s delivered. At that point, they become adamant and want their money back.

But if you’re able to fix this, and also suggest other services that you feel the customer will need, you’ll surpass their expectations.

Also, it is essential to understand that customer satisfaction levels are in 3 forms, first is the desired (what the customer hopes to obtain). The second is sufficient (what the customer would find acceptable) and the third is unsatisfactory. 

Understanding these will give your business an advantage when dealing with customers.

2. Give Them Multiple Options 

Aside from giving them options in the areas of services and needs, customers also require options in the way you communicate with them. 

As a solutions provider, your customers want to always reach you, when they want, how they want, and expect to get your response in a reasonable time.

Either in person, online on social media or WhatsApp, or via phone calls, your customers expect you to communicate with them on their preferred channel. 

In fact, modern consumers want to be able to reach your team across at least 10 different channels — depending on the type of inquiry.

3. Respond Quickly To Them

Customers dislike when their vendors keep them waiting. This gets worse if they’ve made payment for that service.

Irrespective of where you are, put a system in place that responds to your clients in the fastest way possible, even while you’re not there. 

Either in the store, on the phone, or online via social media, make sure that your customers get responses to their inquiries as fast as possible.

However, you can balance these expectations by informing your clients about your open hours on weekdays and weekends. This will make them see your response outside that timeframe as a privilege.

4. Personalized Their Experience

Imagine sending a personalized handwritten CEO note to your customers. How do you think they will feel? 

Or you’ve nudged your customers in such a way that they expect you to be the first person to wish them a happy birthday.

They will be thrilled when they get such an experience.

If you do this all the time when communicating with your customers, they will stick to your brand and become advocates for your services.

 According to Salesforce, 50% of consumers ignore communications that aren’t personalized to them and 79% of consumers will also say that personalized service is more important than personalized marketing.

5. Solve Their Problems

In every customer’s journey, there are times problems arise and they need your team to help.

When this happens and they contact you for inquiry, you should first understand that it is easier for you to grasp and maneuver even when that customers’ problem is yet to have a solution.

So you should quickly guide them to a temporal resolution before they lose trust in your support.

Helping customers to solve problems will fastrack your process of getting them into the loyalty stage, and will help you to avoid issues in the future.

Conclusion

Meeting your customer expectations is a basic function of customers’ success. When your customer gets the right product or service as advertised by the company, they become satisfied. 

And in situations where a problem arises, you’re always available to help them resolve the issue at the right time, they will respect you for keeping to your words.

In that sense, you must equip your customer service team with all the knowledge they need to portray your organization as a customer-centric entity. 

From your security guard to front desk officers, sales team, and everyone in the team, provide them with the resources to understand customer’s needs, solve their problems and attend to them quickly.