Exceeding Expectations

Dominick Solito, Training Director | Gulf Coast

In providing service, many of us think meeting client expectations is positive. Well is it??? When meeting expectations you are delivering on your promise to everyone, including yourself.  It’s delivering to your full potential as a leader, employee, and company. It is that basic and profound.

Meeting expectations is a baseline, and basically it’s being average. There should be a concern on being average because being average does not require much effort.  Average performance means you are following rules, procedures, and the scope of work agreed upon.  You’re doing what’s expected, nothing special or anything that stands out in our fiercely competitive industry.

In training, I always say when starting service with a new client, we need to meet their expectations and then we should exceed expectations to retain the business for a long time. But what is exceeding expectations? Is it delivering “above average” service?  There remains a gap between delivering experiences, results, and outcomes that are above average and those worthy of being identified as world-class excellence, aka “The King of Clean”.

My thoughts on this is that we need to eliminate being average. Being average sets the standards and enables average in your business.

Eliminate “expectations” because one’s expectation of excellence may be another’s perception of average.  Those clients that are demanding are the ones that drive you crazy, make you work harder, and break a sweat. They make you better opposed to the easy clients which are great to have. However, too many great ones will make you lazy and average because meeting their expectations is easy. Conquer those demanding clients and then go for more.

What is your company passionate about? What does it fight every day for? If there isn’t much passion, purpose, and fight for your franchise, there is indifference.  Eliminate indifference, it shows, “I don’t care”.  If you don’t have absolute clarity of where your franchise is going that inspires everyone involved, indifference will spread.  What are you building?  Hopefully your answer exudes excellence (The King of Clean).

Finally, if you believe you can’t, you won’t. If you believe you can, you will. Eliminate “I can’t”.  There is no easy way to achieve excellence.  Achieving excellence is a test of your resolve and ability to lead through adversity.  It can’t be done unless you are mentally prepared to fight for it.