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January 19, 2007
Where's the Thirteenth Donut?
by Elise Bauer
"Where's the thirteenth donut?" my friend and branding impresario Rich Binell likes to shout, especially when confronted with a company whose customers are satisfied, but not spectacularly so. "Who wants to be just good? We want to be great!" He usually adds, emphatically. What Rich is referring to is the age old practice of bakers to add a thirteenth donut when one orders a dozen, thus making up the "baker's dozen". The question is not, how do we meet our customer's expectations, but how do we consistently and surprisingly exceed them?
Think about it. The best way to please someone is to exceed her expectations. The best way to upset someone is to not meet her expectations. (In fact it has been said that all upset comes from unmet expectations.) If you start viewing your business from the view of managing the expectations of your customers, you'll be a step, no a leap ahead of everyone else.
Great companies are always on the lookout for ways to surpass the expectations of their customers. Case in point, Amazon.com. A few years ago Amazon.com experimented with a new policy that for every order over $25, the shipping fees would be waived. First they rolled out this policy in a way that properly managed the expectations of their customers. They clearly stated that the pricing was a test and that they would see if sales increased enough to offset the costs of the program. Free shipping ended up being a boon to Amazon and it is now a permanent policy. The "thirteenth donut" comes into play in that they set the expectation that if you choose free-shipping, it will take 5-9 days to get there, not the usual 2-3. I have found that in almost every case that I select the free-shipping option, the package is sent the regular way, and I have my package in 2-3 days. No extra time in shipping, and it's free.
To beat expectations, you must first meet them. To meet expectations, you must understand what your customers really care about. Google got this concept early on. The reason that they rose to popularity so quickly, and against such behemoths as Yahoo, AOL, and MSN, is that not only did Google deliver great search results, they did so quickly and without clutter. Yahoo was so busy trying to monetize their eyeballs, their search bar was (and still is) buried in clutter.
Once you meet the expectations of what your customers really want, you can begin to think of ways to exceed them. One of Google's extra donuts is the smile that comes from the creative whimsy one would not expect from a search engine. Who isn't familiar with the playful renderings of the Google logo on special events and holidays? Google rolled out its images of the moon at http://moon.google.com/. Slide the magnification bar all the way up and you are in for an amusing surprise.
These are small examples, but they are indicators of a consistent, corporate-wide goal of keeping the happiness of their customers front and center in everything they do.
Remember, first you must understand what your customers truly care about. Second, you must thoroughly meet their expectations. Only then will it matter to beat their expectations. Who cares about a thirteenth donut if some of the twelve are missing?
Posted January 19, 2007 | Permalink
Posted to Marketing Management