How to Exceed Customer Expectations? 8 Strategies that Drive Loyalty

Are you looking for practical ways to exceed customer expectations and transform casual buyers into brand advocates?

• A Walker study said that in 2020, customer experience would trump price and product as one of the key differentiators when choosing a vendor.

• What’s more, 85% of customers are willing to splurge more on a product where the customer expectations are guaranteed to have been met.

• Companies like Amazon and Zappos (which Amazon eventually bought) are known for their customer service as much as for the quality and choice of products they make available to the average customer.

Successful brands know how to imbibe the culture of keeping the customer first from the initial stages of the customer cycle. Otherwise, it is impossible to be extraordinary and meet all your customers’ expectations.

In this comprehensive guide, we'll explore 8 proven strategies to exceed customer expectations, complete with real-world examples you can implement immediately. Whether you're refining your approach or building a customer-centric culture from scratch, these techniques will help you create memorable experiences that turn customers into your advocates.

Why is Exceeding Customer Expectations is Critical to Your Success?

Just satisfying customer expectations is not important. You need to be able to ‘wow’ your customers so that even a single bad experience would not make them move to a competitor. The only reason why a customer would jump ship is when the brand fails to meet its customer expectations.

Competitive Edge

According to Deloitte, more than 62% of companies view customer experience as their primary competitive differentiator.  In today's ultra-competitive marketplace, simply meeting expectations leaves you vulnerable to competitors who go the extra mile.

Building on Customer Feedback

A Gartner survey reveals that companies successfully exceeding customer expectations share a common approach: they systematically collect and analyze customer feedback, then implement improvements based on those insights—creating a continuously improving experience that strengthens their market position.

From Satisfaction to Loyalty

When you consistently exceed customer expectations, you create an emotional connection that changes the transactional relationships into something more of a loyal partnership. Some studies shows that customers who have their expectations exceeded are:

• 5X more likely to purchase again

• 4X more likely to refer friends and colleagues

• 7X more likely to forgive a single negative experience

8 Ways to Exceed Customer Expectations

Let us talk about how you can exceed customer expectations. Here are 8 ways you can meet the expectations of your customers:

• Getting Regular Customer Feedback
• Personalize Your Offering
• Surprise Your Customers
• Highlight Your Best Features Over and Over Again
• Train Your Employees to Serve Your Customers
• Apologize if You Make Mistakes
• Be Consistent Across All Channels
• Follow Up with Your Customers

Let's discuss each in detail!

1. Getting Regular Customer Feedback

To give your customers the ultimate experience and meet every their expectations, the first step is to understand what they want from you. And what better way to know this than directly from them?

Negative or positive, it’s likely that customers are willing to share their experience with you. 

Posing the question to them directly means that you can know clearly why a customer gave you just 6 on a scale of 0 to 10 in the feedback. Was it because the packaging was bad or the product arrived later than promised?

PS: The quality of feedback depends on how tailored your questions are. 

Once you figure out where you went wrong, you are in a position to take actions that your customers would love you to indulge in. 

You can exceed customer expectations by going above and beyond what they expect from you – because you have the answers from customers themselves on what they expect from you. Remember, all you need to do is ask.

Never ever underestimate the importance of your customer’s feedback because they are teaching you how to make your services better (for free). 

Problems that all of your business stakeholders would have ignored during the making of the product may be highlighted by your customers in the feedback because of their experience with your product. 

If you are having doubts on how a customer feedback survey should be conducted, here’s something to help you. The following is a template created with SurveySparrow. 

There are 1000 more such templates, all available to you upon sign-up. OR, a better option is using SurveySparrow AI. Just add in your prompt and watch an entire survey created before you. Want to try them out? Sign up to SurveySparrow for free!

2. Personalize Your Offering

First of all, personalizing doesn’t mean adding their name to the mail or your website. It’s much and more. It’s about understanding individual needs and catering to them. 

While personalizing the product might not be possible for companies in all industries, do lookout for ways in which you can make the offering as relatable as possible to your end customer. 

Study customer expectations and aspirations in your industry to gauge what they expect and go out of your way to make it come true.

So, how can you personalize?

• Talk to the customer next time they drop in at your office or when they call or decide to send you an email.
• Based on your conversation, you can ask them a lot of questions that might make immediate business sense to you.

Building a connection with your customers is one of the proven ways to exceed your customer expectations.

3. Surprise Your Customers

This, in our perspective, is one of the best ways to exceed customer expectations. 

Imagine providing something extra for your customers, when they just expect you to do the bare minimum. Elevated satisfaction, right? 

The more satisfied the customers are, the more loyal they become.  

The next time someone orders from you and looks like a regular customer, why not offer something extra that they would not have expected at all?

Understandably, it might be impossible to do the same for each regular customer if you are selling in the thousands every day. So why not create an automation system?

For example, each customer becomes eligible for a lucky draw when they have completed at least 5 or 10 purchases or spent X amount of money with you. You can have a lucky draw for one customer every single day. 

You can also:

• Use relevant data to wow your customers.
• Collect details like DOB, important anniversaries, or details of any other special days for a customer and offer them a thoughtful gift on these days so that they feel connected to your brand.
• Even something as small as a hand-written letter by the CEO will go a long way in forging the relationship.
• Send a quirky video from your team to customers when they cross a milestone of significance in their personal lives.

You can never quantify the kind of effect this might have on a customer but they will always remember this effort with a good feeling about your brand. This is how great brands are built.

We are again at the same spot - understanding customer expectations (through customer feedback, of course).

4. Highlight Your Best Features Over and Over Again

There is no way a company is good at everything. This is why it is important for you to highlight the best features about you.

For example, in a world of e-commerce companies that sell accessories made from the skin of animals, do you make vegan shoes? Then that is a specialty that very few can boast about. Straightaway, you will have the patronage of customers who are against animal cruelty.

Then you also have the opportunity to persuade people to give up products that are made out of animals by asking them to purchase your products. You can even create campaigns around how your product does not harm a single animal. This can be your greatest selling point and you could tom-tom about it as much as possible because it is your USP.

What is USP? A USP or Unique Selling Point is the differentiating factor of your business that prompts customers to choose you over competitors.

Understand what your strengths are, and emphasize them. For example, SurveySparrow was one of the first VoC tools to introduce AI surveys. We leaned on the feature and attracted more prospects. 

We implemented a feedback loop to learn from customers and were able to improve the feature. You got the gist, right? 

5. Train Your Employees to Serve Your Customers

Customer retention strategies might not be enough if your employees aren’t trained well. We know that not every employee has to deal with the customers, but they do play a crucial role in exceeding customer expectations. 

The objective of the employee training program should be to look at various customer touchpoints where you can improve the experience of the end customer. Another objective should be to look at each area and train the employees so that they can predict any problem in advance and act with responsibility.

Creating a truly remarkable experience for your customers completely depends on your employees even if you have created fool-proof systems in place. Impress upon your teams that the end goal for the business is to keep the customers loyal, satisfied and happy.

6. Apologize if You Make Mistakes

Mistakes are something inevitable. No matter how careful you are, it will happen nonetheless. So, the next step as a business owner is for you to admit when you have made one. 

Customers do possess empathy, they understand that not everyone is perfect and are ready to move on. Once the air is cleared, it is impossible not to have renewed trust and affection for each other. For all you know, they might even become an advocate of your brand.

But that’s not the end. 

See where you have gone wrong, fix it at the earliest and let the customers know you have resolved the issue. This shows the customers that you value their feedback and is striving to make the experience better. 

Here are some common customer experience mistakes you can avoid from our experts. 

7. Be Consistent Across All Channels

You can’t blame the customer for expecting a business to have a similar set of communication across all channels. Whether it be social media platforms, email, or even when talking to the customer service personnel over a phone call.

So create workflows that work intelligently so that there are no gaps for a customer visiting your website, making the payment, and getting after-sales service either.

• Create a guide for each of the employees so that there is a script for handling objections and clearing any doubts.
• Also, create a workflow chart to see if customers get what they are expecting from us, and aren’t struggling at any of the customer touchpoints. The chart should be able to help you identify each area for the customer.
• One more area that you need to concentrate on is checking out if all the methods through which a customer communicates get the same kind of customer experience.

Just because a customer only sent an email doesn’t mean that their request is any less important than someone who called. Treat each of them with the right amount of respect and professionalism. Customers can tell when they have not been treated properly.

8. Follow Up with Your Customers

Everyone is a customer to someone, it’s the hard truth. 

So, think of yourself as a customer. Think about that time when you wanted to share your experience with the company or vendor but were not able to. The experience wasn’t bad, it wasn’t good either. So, nothing is prompting you to reach out to them and share. 

Now, from the business’s perspective. Think of the valuable feedback you are missing from such customers. All that stood between the business and the credible advice was a single phone call or mail. 

So, make sure that you always follow up to measure the satisfaction of your customers. This can be done through simple phone calls, emails, or scheduled surveys. 

• Phone calls are efficient, but will take a lot of manpower and other resources.
• Emails are good, but with a lot of emails piling up, it’s possible to get lost in the inbox.
• Surveys, when shared through the right channels, are better in terms of participation and response rate.

If you are thinking that we are boasting surveys on purpose, just consider the following. 

You have purchased an item from an eCommerce platform. After a month, you got a message on your WhatsApp, checking with you about the functionality/quality of the purchased product. If you find any discomfort using the product, you will certainly provide feedback, because it’s very easy. It’s just a text message. 

See how easy and comfortable surveys can be when shared through the right channels. Moreover, it’s cost effective in comparison to phone calls. 

This is why SurveySparrow offers a wide variety of channels to share your surveys through. From slack and MS teams to SMS and WhatsApp, it supports all. 

We understand that the best way to increase participation is to share where the customers are. So, if most of your target customers are using Slack, then share there. If it’s WhatsApp, share there…you know the rest. 

Reach out to the customers through their preferred channels and actively listen to their voices with SurveySparrow. 

Some Examples of Exceeding Customer Expectations

We know that you already understand what we have discussed here. However, just in case, if you want to know what exceeding expectations looks like, here are some examples.

Exceeding Customer Expectations Through Personalized Experience

Imagine checking into a hotel for your anniversary. Instead of a standard welcome, you find a handwritten note from the hotel manager. And that's not all, it also comes with a complimentary bottle of wine.

Such a thoughtful touch makes your stay memorable and shows that the hotel values you.

Exceeding Customer Expectations Through Surprising the Customers

You have been a constant customer at a car rental for the past 5 years. Now, when you get there to pick up the rental, the agent informs you that they have upgraded you to a luxury model at no extra cost. And to sweeten your experience, they also included free extras like a GPS system and unlimited mileage.

This is what we talked about surprising the customers. Providing such proactive services enhances the experience and makes the customer feel valued.

Exceeding Customer Expectations Through Feedback Implementation

Let's explain with SurveySparrow as an example.

When AI topics were on full-swing, we connected with our star customers to seek their feedback. We collected, analyzed, and prioritized based on this feedback.

The feedback was the reason why we were able to come up with the AI-powered survey and CogniVue. CogniVue - is an AI-powered advanced analytics tool you can use to understand key drivers, customer emotions, topic extractions, and more.

In doing so, we provided value to our customers and improved our product at the same time.

Understand Customers and Exceed Their Expectations!

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Conclusion

There is one thing that you need to be sure about after reading this through. It is the fact that customer experience is not something that can be ignored anymore. It’s a proven path to long-term loyalty, brand advocacy, and business growth. From actively collecting customer feedback to surprising customers with thoughtful gestures, each of the eight strategies we explored can help you up your customer experience game from average to unforgettable.

But here’s the secret: success lies not just in knowing what to do, but in consistently doing it right. That’s where tools like SurveySparrow come in. With AI-powered survey creation, omnichannel distribution, and powerful analytics like CogniVue, SurveySparrow makes it effortless to listen, learn, and act on what truly matters to your customers.

If you want to start somewhere, start with SurveySparrow’s free forever plan to collect real-time insights, automate personalized engagement, and build a brand customers trust and rave about.

Remember, exceeding expectations is no longer optional because your competitors are already on it. Ready to wow your customers?