Reasonable service is not outstanding service

Let’s say a company meets its customers expectations, we have we have delivered good service, right? Wrong! At this point we have just delivered reasonable service. Reasonable service is about meeting our customers’ expectations. Outstanding service is about exceeding our customers’ expectations. On a scale of ‘poor’, ‘mediocre’, and great’, meeting the expectations can only be classed at mediocre. Great professionals exceed their customers’ expectations.

This happened a little while ago, to me
I bought a camera for my brother in a store at a very famous mall. The sales person spent about twenty minutes with me, and was totally professional in the help and advice that she gave me. Then I started to negotiate. Obviously I wanted to get the best price, and haggled as best as I could. I managed to trim the price down nicely, and felt very pleased with the whole deal
I gave her card, which she processed. Then she put the camera into a bag for me. Just as I was turning round to leave, she stopped me, leaned behind her, picked up a small box of film, and said to me: “please, would you accept this as a small token of our appreciation for buying your camera here”. Now remember, this was done after the sale was completed and paid for. What a lovely surprise! What a sweet taste that put into my mouth! And you can bet that I’ve been back to that store many times since, even though I live a bit far from this very same mall