I caught this article on Atlantic this morning. It’s all about making promises. Essentially, when you break a promise, you hurt feelings and disappoint the person(s) you made a promise to.
Obvious.
However, when you exceed a promise, when you go above and beyond what you promise you will do, it’s not much more rewarding than simply meeting the promise.
The research behind it makes me skeptical of businesses making promise’s to their customers and clients. If a PR agency promises they can increase a Twitter following by 500 in a week, and end up increasing it by 1,200, the client merely sees that the agency do what it promises, not that it can do more than it promises. There’s no guarantee they can do that again next week.
Alas, we arrive at the scale, weighing promises against expectations.*
Perhaps it’s not just safer to say “this is what you can expect” instead of “this is what we can promise,” but it’s more beneficial, rewarding, and likely to result in a remarkable experience.
The motto goes “exceed expectations.” You never hear, “exceed promises.”
Stay Positive & What Do You Expect?
*Dan Ariely touches on this in his book predictably irrational and his blog.
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