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June 08, 2005
When competitors set customer expectations
The Evil Dr. Porkchop puts Linens N Things on the grill for his experience with the retail chain's "buy-on-the-web-and-pick-up-at-the-store" service that's customer-unfriendly due to days of "processing time".
When you introduce a service similar to one your customers already use with someone else, the someone else is managing the customer expectations for that service.
An excellent observation from the Good Doctor.
Other blogs that reference When competitors set customer expectations:
Interesting article, but your title is a bit misleading. His point is that non-competitors may be setting expectations. Circuit City and Linens N Things aren't competitors. If you're going to roll out a new service like the "click and mortor" online purchase/offline pick-up model, then you need to look at other retailers (even non-competitors) who use the same model. They've set customer expectations.
Good point about the blog post title. It's not just competitors who are setting customer expectations, it's any similar business.
I guess the point of the title was the fact that Linens N Things never said their service worked different from anyone else's. Had they simply stated somewhere that here's the service level agreement, this would have played out differently. Rather, they didn't and I had an unrealistic expectation about their service.
To Dustin's point, I agree completely. From a service perspective, the question is not who's your competition, but rather, what's the norm in the customer space for a given service.
