National Clothesline

Customer expectations play a huge part in customer satisfaction. And customer expectations today are higher than at any other time. With an unprecedented amount of choices, customers of most businesses expect perfection, or something close to it, all the time.

A customer’s satisfaction with your service is a function of two separate factors:

• Their expectations coming into your business.

• The actual experience itself.

The fact that expectations play such an important role in determining customer satisfaction impacts your business in many ways:

Customers have learned to continually expect more, which means that customer satisfaction is a moving target. Standing still is tantamount to failing. A cleaner must constantly improve or be passed by those that do.

Customers have heightened expectations for each touchpoint of contact with your company. It isn ’t enough to improve the quality of your product. To stay competitive, cleaners need to regularly offer new and better services.

Today’s “Wow” factor is tomorrow’s standard practice. A cleaner can gain a short-term bump in customer satisfaction and sales by introducing a new service or product feature, but soon enough the competition will introduce the same or better. Then the new breakthrough service quickly becomes a baseline expectation.

High expectations have become a fact of life for most drycleaners.

Even low expectations are higher. An overlooked stain, double crease, or misplaced garment — common problems just a few years ago — are no longer acceptable.

Similarly, dropped cell phone calls, what was a regular occurrence, are now not tolerable.

Snail-like modem connections to the Internet are fast becoming history.

Highways littered with broken-down cars with steam pouring out from under the hood are a distant memory.

Now it’s better service, better clothes, better shoes, better quality produce in the supermarket, better digital cameras, better everything!

The higher the expectations, the higher the bar is set for meeting or exceeding them. Being a “couture cleaner” carries with it a suitcase full of expectations. One surly counterperson or damaged designer gown can fracture the whole experience.

But if expectations are low, as with a one-price cleaner, the satisfaction bar is correspondingly low, and that company has a great opportunity to exceed expectations to produce advocates. An extra-friendly counter-person at a discount cleaner can turn the typical, nomadic customer into a regular customer.

In a world in which we are barraged by marketing messages coming at us from every angle, customer expectations can be attributed to an unprecedented flow of information.

In this age of information, customers can shop your services as well as your prices from the comfort of their homes, 24 hours a day! It is tougher than ever to surprise anyone but still possible to delight people if you can at least match their experience with their expectations.

For sharp drycleaners with the aim of a superior marksman, hitting the moving target of customer satisfaction can become the backbone of their business.

Achieving customer satisfaction isn’t a sprint or a marathon. Both of those metaphors presume there is a finish line and a chance to enjoy victory at the end of the race.

Instead, it is a continuous challenge without an end. Customer expectations in this day and age keep rising and cleaners who cannot keep up and stay ahead of the curve face serious problems, if not extinction.

No company understands customer satisfaction more than Lexus. Lexus is one of those rare companies that excels at everything it does, from design to manufacturing to sales and to service.

Since it began as a luxury brand by Toyota in 1989, Lexus has been at the top, at one time or another, of just about every automotive satisfaction study that J.D. Power and Associates has conducted:

2004, first place in initial quality.

2004, first place in long-term vehicle dependability.

2004, first place in sales satisfaction.

2003, first place in dealer satisfaction.

Lexus’ continued success is no accident. Since the August 1983 meeting in Japan when Toyota chairman Eiji Toyoda approved the plan to get into the luxury car market, Lexus has kept a steady eye on their mission.

“It is time to build a car that is better than the best in the world,” Toyoda said that day.

It was a gutsy move for a company whose brand was synonymous with low-cost cars.

The German automakers publicly sneered at the idea of a luxury car coming from Japan. They arrogantly believed the world would never buy it.

When Lexus introduced its first model, it took the bold step of publicly unveiling their new car for the first time in Germany, right in the face of the competition. Indeed, over the last four years, Lexus has out-sold every luxury brand including both BMW and Mercedes-Benz to become the best-selling luxury car in U.S. history.

As great as sales have been, the most remarkable thing about Lexus is the way it has used customer satisfaction to build its brand.

In order to create new advocates, Lexus must not only produce the best product, but must provide a superior customer experience, at their dealerships.

Customers expect better service each year. The kind of service Lexus provides its customers today is light-years ahead of anything that any car company provided twenty years ago.

We live in a “new and improved” society. The era of “whiter whites” and “better tasting” has changed into a new era of heighten expectations and shortened attention spans.

Raising product quality comes from innovation and technological breakthroughs. But improving customer service is more a matter of what a company is willing to do, as opposed to product innovations that are limited by what a company is able to do.

Aggravation is everywhere. Everyone has an endless supply of service-based horror stories.

In the middle of this sea of disgruntled customers lies your greatest opportunity.

Drycleaners who effectively address the service quandary can gain a significant competitive advantage. But identifying where service can be improved is only half the battle.

Before implementing a new service, you must evaluate the potential return on investment this new service will bring.

How much will this new service cost our company?

How much will this new service increase customer satisfaction? And if it does, will the resulting increase in customer satisfaction translate into increased sales?

Will the new service allow us to justify higher prices?

Will this new service create opportunities to win new customers?

Will the competition follow our lead, and if so, how long will we keep our competitive advantage?

The answers will vary from one situation to the next, but the winning businesses are the ones that are not afraid to take risks and push the customer satisfaction envelope.