By Daniel Van Vorsselen, business director and CX lead, TRA
Surprise and delight are seen as the ultimate goal for brands. Get it right, and you’ll build salience and loyalty. But could continuously striving to delight your customers do more harm than good?
Customers don’t judge brand interactions in isolation, they benchmark them against broader interactions with big brands across industries. Which is why, at its core, CX is about managing and delivering on expectations. Meeting the expectations set by your brand will consistently build trust. There’s a reason we expect more from Air New Zealand than Jetstar.
Loyalty isn’t realised through one-off moments or grand gestures. It’s built on consistent and reliable delivery. Exceeding expectations might be momentarily exciting, but it isn’t sustainable. Once a customer experiences an elevated level of service, they expect it every time. At best, occasionally over-delivering will risk setting brands up for expectations they can’t sustain. At worst, trying too hard to surprise and delight could interrupt the ease of an action or a task – increasing frustration.
Failing to meet expectations, especially after overpromising, will drop customer satisfaction below the baseline and risk destroying trust. It raises the bar for future interactions, and that’s why it’s risky. Customers value predictability more than surprise. So, rather than constantly trying to ‘delight,’ invest in delivering on brand promise.
Take the Prime delivery promise. Amazon customers know exactly what to expect from this promise – fast and free delivery. So, as long as those expectations are met, customers remain satisfied. But if a Prime package arrives late? The emotional response is disproportionate as the experience falls below expectations.
Daniel Van Vorsselen
The case for good enough
For brands, the real opportunity isn’t in ‘over-the-top’ – it’s in ‘good enough’. It might sound counterintuitive, but trying too hard can lead to over-investment or too much focus on the wrong areas.
Good enough experiences emotionally resonate. They validate a brand’s promise time and time again, with consistently reliable experiences that meet expectations across the entire customer journey. That’s everything from communications and advertising to product experience and sales conversations. It’s the anticipation leading up to an interaction, the feelings during an experience and the memories that linger long after the experience has ended. When customer expectations are validated, their experiences evoke positive emotions, and they’re remembered.
So, how can brands mitigate the risk of unintentionally creating high expectations that are hard to maintain? In the words of Matt Watkinson, “be simply better”. Watkinson argues that brand loyalty doesn’t come from advocacy or grand gestures – it comes from simply being better than the competition at a given job.
That’s because customers don’t stay loyal just because they love a brand, they stay because it’s the best option for them – because it meets their needs in the best way. So, make it easy for customers to come back again and again. To keep choosing you.
Apple is a good example of what it means to be ‘simply better’. Instead of ‘delighting’ customers with surprise perks, the brand makes it easy to integrate new hardware. Apple’s frictionless ecosystem is seamless and integrated, allowing users to quickly set up new products and transfer information. So, customers stay loyal – it’s inconvenient for customers to switch to other brands.
Introducing emotion
Consistent doesn’t mean emotionless. Emotions play a crucial role in how experiences are remembered. While delight may fade, consistency and regular emotive connection is powerful.
Well-placed emotions such as motivation, inspiration, or a sense of accomplishment can elevate even functional experiences.
Consistency isn’t the opposite of emotion, it’s the foundation for it. By consistently meeting expectations, brands will have the trust needed for emotional impact to the land. That doesn’t mean surprising customers randomly – it means creating emotional resonance at the moments that matter most. That could be a sense of relief when a task is completed effortlessly, helping build motivation at the start of a journey or a feeling of closure when an issue is resolved smoothly. Think of emotion as a design input, not just an outcome.
Ultimately, the best experiences balance emotion and ease. To make the experience both meaningful and predictable, be intentional. Curate smooth, intuitive experiences by setting clear expectations and delivering consistently. Engage customers emotionally, not just efficiently. Think of it this way – consistency earns the right to create emotion. And when expectations are met and emotions are stirred at the right moments, that’s what makes experiences memorable.
The best brands don’t chase grand gestures – they engineer seamless, frustration-free experiences with just the right amount of emotional resonance. By focusing on expectation management, reducing friction, and crafting purposeful emotional highs, brands can create lasting loyalty. Not just momentary delight.