A while back I wrote about how understanding customers’ expectations and how well those expectations are met are among the most important things marketers can know.
The importance of customer expectations has reared it’s head again. Listen to what my Twitter-buddy Mike Templeton had to say on his blog recently in a post titled Twitter Is Taking Too Long To Respond:
It sounds like more and more people are getting frustrated these days. I’ve been spending more time on Plurk as a result. I’ve given up on using twhirl right now because the limit on requests is so low it just takes too long to stay up to date.”
My take: First off, I think Mike’s hunch that he’s not alone in his “frustration” is right on. But, based on the rest of his comment, I can’t help but think: My, how quickly we forget!
Do we not remember what is was like before Twitter? When we didn’t have any way of conducting real-time group communication?
But now, Mike — and presumably many other people — aren’t satisfied because, as Mike puts it, “twhirl threw off their auto-leveling requests to the Twitter API.” What’s really driving their frustration is that Twitter isn’t working as they expect it to.
Expectations have changed. If we had never experienced near real-time updates, 60 second updates might seem like a miracle.
And this is why I get skeptical when I see marketing campaigns like Berkshire Bancorp’s “most exciting bank” and WaMu’s “Whoo hoo!”
They set expectations that those firms might not be able to live up to. And I can’t think of a worse marketing sin than not living up to the expectations set by your advertising and marketing efforts.
Image via flickr
Original Post: http://snarketing2dot0.com/2008/07/11/the-importance-of-setting-and-understanding-customer-expectations/
