The science of expectation

Expectations are so critical because they are fundamental to how the brain works. The dopamine neurons in our brain that are responsible for regulating our emotions work by generating patterns based on experience: they trigger emotions based on predictions.

When everything goes according to our predictions these dopamine neurons fire up and we experience pleasurable positive emotions. However, if our expectations turn out to be wrong, the neurons stop firing and we feel upset. The brain is designed to accentuate the impact of these mistakes. As soon as an outcome does not match an expectation the brain sits up and pays attention: few things generate such a powerful emotional response as surprise because we need to learn from our mistakes in order to survive. This makes unexpected pleasures far more powerful too.

Memory and experience

Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman makes an interesting observation about the critical role of memory in the context of experience, drawing a distinction between the experiencing self, concerned with what is happening in the present, and the remembering self who reviews an experience retrospectively.³ He concludes that ‘Memories are all we get to keep from our experience of living, and the only perspective that we can adopt as we think about our lives is therefore that of the remembering self.’⁴

Since our memories of past experiences are used to set expectations for the future, the memories we have of a customer experience are crucial, not just because we want customers to have positive memories, but because it affects the likelihood of repeat business.

Learnt behaviours and associations

Through repetition, we find we are able to do things without consciously thinking about them. Examples of this automaticity are abundant: we can walk and talk without tripping over our feet or type without thinking about the keys. We often get home from a long journey to realise we have been driving for a long time, changing lanes, accelerating, braking and checking our mirrors without consciously doing any of it.

These kinds of learnt behaviours only work in conditions that match our expectations: I can type without thinking on a variety of devices only if they all have a QWERTY keyboard. I expect the order of the pedals in a car to be clutch, brake, accelerator. We’ve all had situations where we try to change our behaviour but do things on auto-pilot, like making a cup of tea for a friend but putting sugar in because that’s how we have it. These errors are known as strong habit intrusions.⁵

We also develop associations over time – smells awaken long forgotten memories and colours take on symbolic meanings; associations which can also apply to brands. People often describe superlative examples in a given market as ‘The Rolls-Royce’. Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne said in an interview, ‘I want Fiat to become the Apple of automobiles. And the 500 will be our iPod.’⁶

There are very few experiences that don’t involve learnt behaviours and associations in some way. Actively considering them makes sure we are using them to our advantage. We can even make the mundane or tedious more enjoyable by transferring learnt behaviours and associations from more positive experiences.

Expectations – a golden opportunity

Precisely because expectations are so powerful and often so poorly handled, expectation management is a golden opportunity. This is great news for you: while your competitors are busy disappointing their customers by not calling them back, breaking promises and over-hyping their new offerings, you can be building a reputation for reliability and trustworthiness. I have often thought that all a courier would need to do to sew up the market is deliver when they say they will and pro-actively let you know if they are running late, or can’t find your address. Nobody has managed this yet from my experience!

To make expectation management work in your favour all we need to look at is how and when expectations get set and met throughout the experience; how we can leave customers with the most positive memories of their experiences; and also consider any existing learnt behaviours and associations that may come into play. The rest of this chapter shows you how to do this in practice.

Expectation mapping

Part of the reason that companies struggle to manage expectations is because of the divisional structures often found in organisations. As we move along our customer journey, each stage is often presided over by a different department with different motives, so it’s no wonder we often end up with conflicting expectations. The advertising team want to create desire for the product, sales teams are often on commission. Neither of them actually design the product itself. Customer services teams often pick up the pieces at the end.

This is why we often find ourselves seduced by a fantastic advert only for the product to disappoint, or enjoy a fantastic product only to find the customer service is terrible – different teams, different motives. It seems crazy when you think about it, but most businesses do not pro-actively manage customer expectations, even though they know they are important. I’ve yet to work in an organisation where explicit consideration of expectations across the customer journey is part of the design process. Let’s put this right!

Expectations cascade from the top down. What we expect from the brand applies to the product or service, then to every little interaction. To provide a great experience, we need to see the customer experience as one long journey, and a continuous process of setting and meeting expectations. Since we have already broken the customer journey down into broad stages containing smaller steps, all we need to do is model what the customers’ expectations are at the beginning of each stage or step, and what subsequent expectations are set by it. By doing this we can not only expose any risks of misaligned expectations, but we can ensure that the customer knows what to expect from the very start of their experience to the very end.

To do this you just need a sheet of paper or a spreadsheet with three columns (or the worksheet available on my website at www.mattwatkinson.co.uk/worksheets). In the first column you put the stage or step name (depending on the level of detail you are looking at), in the second column you put ‘existing expectations’, then in the third column you put ‘set expectations’.

• Existing expectations are those that the customer has already when they commence this stage of the experience, for example when they arrive at an airline’s website, they expect to be able to search for flights.
• Set expectations are those that arise as the result of an interaction, for example once they have checked in online, they expect that they will not have to queue to check in at the airport terminal.

Once you have this list you can get to work on identifying issues. These are typically caused by three things:

1. Dissonance – the set expectation not matching the reality
2. Absence – expectations not being set at all
3. Inference – the customer’s expectations being set elsewhere

MINIMISING DISSONANCE

A classic example of dissonance comes from a company I met which told me a major cause of customer disappointment was when they had to send an engineer out to repair one of their products. Their advertising said that their response time was four hours on average, however this was only the average. It could be up to eight hours. Customers who saw the advert focused on the ‘four hours’ and so anything longer was a disappointment.

Dissonance is the most common form of expectation failure: saying one thing, then doing something else. This is why it is important to consider both set and met expectations so you can look for differences between them. Once you identify a gap you can then decide whether to set a different expectation or adjust the real-world experience to meet it. If you say you are going to do something, you must do it. This alone will stand you above the competition in most cases.

ABSENCE – FILLING THE VOID

Failing to set expectations at all can be a major source of frustration. None of us likes to be kept in the dark. Ask yourself ‘What expectations are going unmanaged?’

INFERENCE – DON’T LEAVE EXPECTATIONS TO THE IMAGINATION

I recently worked with a private health company which had big problems with expectation management, caused by inference. Customers assumed that when they had private health cover they could just go and book treatments with consultants or practitioners only to find that they weren’t covered because they hadn’t used an approved facility or professional, or that the treatment wasn’t covered in their policy. They also assumed that because they now had private cover they no longer needed to use the National Health Service for anything, which isn’t correct either. This has dire consequences for both the business and the customer: the business is unfairly branded as reluctant to pay out, and the customer is left with an unexpected bill that could run into thousands.

The policy literature states that there is a process that must be followed to get private treatment, but customers do not always read the details and therefore make incorrect assumptions. The solution was to communicate the process more clearly, providing a simple step-by-step set of instructions that explained: what to do, what you should have done already, and what happens next for each step of the process, to make sure that accurate expectations were set at all times.

Often what a customer expects isn’t set by the business at all. It can come from a friend recommending something, a reputation in the market, or even from competitors. If everybody else offers online check-in and we don’t, even if it’s for a great reason, we need to manage that expectation upfront, rather than leaving the customer to ferret around on the website looking for a feature that doesn’t exist. Ask yourself ‘What expectations are being set that are out of our control, and how can we address them? What assumptions is the customer making about our product or service and are they accurate?’

Here are some general rules that can help you further improve your expectation management.

Aim for consistency

Consistent behaviour leads to accurate expectations, and is the bedrock on which trust is built. We want to know what is stable today to establish what we think will happen in the future. There can be little trust without reliability. Aim to create a consistent experience not just across customers, but along the duration of the experience, so each stage is of an equal standard. This not only helps with expectation management, it reinforces what the brand stands for when the values are demonstrated with absolute consistency. If our experiences are of a consistently high standard it also makes the odd blip more forgivable! Ask yourself ‘How can we make the experience of a consistent standard for each customer, and at every stage of the journey?’ Again, this is where knowing each step of the experience from start to finish will be invaluable to identify the wrinkles that need smoothing out.

Design a future memory

Daniel Kahneman, whose work on memory and experience we looked at earlier in the chapter, also conducted pioneering research on a phenomenon know as the peak-end rule, which shows that our memory of an event is most influenced by the severity of pain at its greatest magnitude – the peak – and by how well or badly the experience ends.⁷

We can put the peak-end rule to good use: thinking about the peaks in the experience and how each interaction ends makes an excellent means to prioritise areas for improvement: minimising any negative spikes first, and making sure the end of each interaction is the best it can be. Returning to our air travel example, since we usually have to surrender any fluids beforehand, why not have staff on the other side of the security point giving out free bottles of water? This would certainly give us a better memory of what is quite a negative, invasive experience.

Make somebody responsible for the customer experience

The customer experience requires ownership and leadership in the same way that a building needs an architect or a movie needs a director. Somebody needs to have overall responsibility and accountability for the customer experience who is not blinkered by the typical departmental boundaries, especially if the customer experience involves multiple touchpoints.

This person – let’s call them the Chief Experience Officer (CXO) – needs to sit at the highest level of the organisation, alongside the heads of finance and operations. Often we find that the customer experience team, where they do exist, is within marketing. This is back to front: marketing is a sub-section of the overall customer experience, not the other way around, and the organisational structure should reflect this. Without this person in place, it will be very difficult to create the consistency along the customer journey that is the hallmark of a great customer experience.

Reset expectations as early as possible

Situations change, unforeseen complications arise, and people make mistakes. When this happens, our expectations need to be reset as soon as is possible. It is usually my experience that people don’t mind if something goes awry, as long as they are put in a position where they can plan accordingly. This is why the waiter tells you when you sit down to eat if an item on the menu is unavailable, rather than waiting for you to try to order it.

Poor expectation management is not only a huge problem for customers, it’s often a disaster for the project managers that try to deliver improvements. Humans are pretty poor at estimating how long a project will take, and failure to reset expectations about delivery dates, timelines and costs cripples a business’s ability to plan and deliver a strategy. Here’s how it happens: a project scope is decided upon, representatives from IT, design and project management gather to provide time and cost estimates, which are almost always wildly optimistic.

The problem is that these estimates become commitments. The expectations are set. Very soon it becomes obvious to everyone that the timeline is way out – they need to de-scope some elements of the project, ask for more money, or push back the deadline. Management need to be told as soon as possible that their expectations are now totally divorced from reality, but this doesn’t happen because whoever made the estimates doesn’t want to look like an idiot. The project carries on until it gets to just before the delivery date when all of a sudden someone confesses to the bosses that they haven’t a hope of delivering anything on time. By this point they are past the point of no return and one of three things happens: they rush it out to market when it isn’t finished; they reluctantly continue throwing good money after bad; or they bin the project and accept that they’ve just wasted a load of resources getting nowhere.

This is clearly not in anyone’s interest – the customer suffers, it undermines the hard work of the team and it diminishes the likelihood of profit – yet it is commonplace. Don’t punish yourselves or your customers. Ask yourself ‘When things change, are we resetting expectations as soon as possible?’

Exceed with caution

We owe much of our success as a species to an amazing ability to adapt. Almost anything can become ‘normal’ over time and our appreciation tends to diminish respectively. While the adage ‘you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone’ may hold true, the maxim ‘under promise and over deliver’ is bad advice. Continually exceeding expectations makes this an expectation in itself – one that becomes impossible to satisfy.

Expectations are continually rising as it is – we find ourselves on the hedonic treadmill where pleasures that were once incomparable become ordinary. To attempt continually to exceed expectations only serves to make a rod for your own back. If I reply to a client e-mail at the weekend as a one-off it may exceed expectations. If I do it habitually it is no longer the exception, it is the rule.

This presents something of a paradox. A positive surprise caused by exceeding expectations can make an experience much more pleasurable, yet to continuously exceed expectations is unsustainable. The solution is to exceed expectations in an apparently random or at least variable way, or simply as and when the opportunity presents itself. This avoids the experience feeling mechanical or contrived. Surprise is the key word here – if it’s expected it’s not a surprise!

In my experience, simply using the principles in this book often generates design solutions that have a tendency to surprise – neat ways of doing things that are unexpectedly pleasurable are more than enough, in fact it’s often the small things that count the most. I would focus efforts on eliminating the effects of incongruence, absence and inference before trying to exceed expectations. In a world where expectations are so poorly managed often meeting them well is more than enough. As a final word of caution, when seeking to surprise the customer, make absolutely sure it will be a welcome surprise. You may think you are doing something nice or helpful but end up doing the opposite. Ask yourself ‘What opportunities are there for a positive surprise in this experience? How can we make this personal to the customer?’

Re-use learnt behaviours

When considering a stage of the experience, think carefully about what behaviours may already be familiar to the customer, and whether or not they can be re-used to make the interaction feel more intuitive. Ask yourself ‘What learnt behaviours apply to this situation? Are we using them effectively?’

Recognition over recall

A good rule of thumb is to try to create interactions that rely on recognition rather than recall. The more intuitive something is to use, often the more readily we adopt it. The gestural interfaces used on touch-screen smart-phones are a good example. It feels natural to swish up or down with a finger to scroll, or pinch to zoom out. Ask yourself ‘How can we make this step more intuitive for the customer?’

Conventions are your friend

Conventions can become so firmly entrenched in our psyche that even if a re-design were to improve things, customer acceptance would be low. The QWERTY keyboard was originally designed to prevent typewriters from jamming, not to be the fastest possible layout, and despite alternative designs proposed over the years, claiming greater efficiency and improved ergonomics, none has achieved widespread adoption. This is no surprise – we would all have to re-learn how to type to adopt another layout. Conventions are also apparent in interface design, especially within e-commerce websites. We naturally look for terms like ‘add to basket’ or a small shopping trolley icon when trying to buy, and are familiar with filling out the requisite forms for address, or card details.

It is prudent to consider what existing conventions relate to your offerings, so any risk attached to changing them can be identified. Defying them unnecessarily tends to be gimmickry rather than innovation. Ask yourself ‘What conventions come into play during this stage of the experience?’ When you have identified the conventions ask yourself ‘Is an alternative approach genuinely better? Is resistance likely to be high? Does the benefit of learning a new approach outweigh the cost of having to learn something new?’

Take advantage of association by borrowing cues

Car designers are famous for building associations by borrowing characteristics from other products, from the fins on the back of an old Cadillac to the Lamborghini Reventon which uses cues from fighter jets to evoke the same associations of speed, power and advanced technology. Watch manufacturers are another example, often taking cues from both motorsport and aviation.

Associations can be a powerful tool to help re-frame the customer experience in a different light. Perhaps we could borrow cues from a positive experience, such as entering an exclusive club or event to transform passing through airport security from an invasive, unpleasant experience into one that conferred status on the passenger. How could we make the passenger feel like a VIP instead of a criminal? We could replace the usual crowd-control retractable belt barriers with more attractive roped ones. We could try using a red carpet instead of the dull grey one to evoke the association with entering an exclusive venue. Perhaps if the staff were smartly attired, welcoming and polite like a doorman at an up-market hotel we would feel better about the whole experience. Combined with the free water at the end, this would add up to a much improved experience. If they can have dedicated lanes for certain airlines they can certainly make those lanes more attractive. I want to fly with the airline that shows that they care about their customers and wants to do something to make the experience better. I can only imagine customers from another security lane looking on jealously and thinking – ‘I’ll fly with that airline next time.’

Summary

• Expectations are fundamental to how the brain works. The dopamine neurons in our brain trigger emotions based on predictions.
• Since our memories of past experiences are used to set expectations for the future, the memories we have of a customer experience are crucial.
• Over time we develop learnt behaviours and associations which can be used to our advantage.
• Expectations are powerful and often poorly handled, making expectation management a golden opportunity for creating a competitor advantage.
• To provide a great experience, we need to see the customer experience as one long journey, and a continuous process of setting and meeting expectations.
• Issues around expectations usually fall into three categories: dissonance – where expectations do not match reality; absence – where expectations are not set at all; and inference – where a customer’s expectations are being set by something out of our control.
• To set more accurate expectations, and build brand trust, work on creating a consistent customer experience.
• Somebody at the highest level of the organisation needs to be responsible for the customer experience to make sure consistent expectations are set along the whole customer journey.