Customers are people, and people tend to have expectations. Helping your customer expectations to be realistic and align with what you can provide will help you to be more successful and better meet your customers’ needs. Managing customer expectations can be a big challenge, but if you are upfront with your customers you can make it happen. The better you get at managing customer expectations, the more satisfied your customers will be.
Here are three tips to manage customer expectations.
Be Transparent
You have a chance at managing your customers’ expectations if your practices are opaque. They need to have an idea of what you offer or how your processes work. Being transparent hopes your customers to better understand your business and protect you from misunderstood expectations. Being transparent with your customers also helps you to build relationships of trust so they will want to return to your business. You don’t have to tell your customers every single thing that happens in your business but being as transparent as possible will go a long way towards establishing trust and managing expectations.
Protect Yourself with a Contract
A contract may seem like overkill for certain jobs, but it can provide you and your business with a lot of protection. A contract can spell out specifically what services customers are receiving. This will prevent confusion, and make sure that you and your customer are on the same page. Write out your contracts carefully and check them for mistakes so you don’t accidentally cause a problem or misrepresent any aspect of the job. Having a clear contract will protect you and your customers.
Provide a Clear Timeline
One of the main places where customers often misunderstand a project or get unrealistic expectations is with the timeline of the project. Sometimes customers think things will happen much more quickly than is possible, and that can cause big problems for you. Being upfront about the timeline from the beginning will help to prevent this confusion from occurring. If anything changes it affects the timeline in any way make sure to let your clients know, so they can adjust their expectations accordingly. Letting them know from the beginning that the timeline is an estimate can also help them to temper their expectations.
Keeping tabs on your customers’ expectations is crucial if you want to succeed as a business. When you master the skill of managing customer expectations, your business will be in a great position to help your customers and get things done.
At Offix, we are all about setting clear expectations. That’s why we have created our famous Service Smart Guarantees.
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