Exceeding our expectations

Businesses are getting militant about customer satisfaction. It's no longer good enough that their customers are satisfied. They want to know if you are exceedingly satisfied. They are not giving you any better service, necessarily, but they expect you to be happier with it. And they do not give you the option of feeling anything less.

For instance, at the bank one day, the teller completed my transaction in a fairly straightforward manner, which is to say she smiled and nodded on my arrival, punched a bunch of numbers in, and handed me my slip. Just as I was putting everything away and about to leave, she said, in a voice that indicated she expected me to say yes, "Did I exceed your expectations today?"

She did not even look at me when she said this, which indicates how much she either (a) cared about what I would answer or (b) was confident that I would say yes. I just stared at her. Exceed my expectations? Maybe if she'd given me, say, the key to the vault and told me to help myself to the contents, then yes, I would say she had exceeded my expectations. But for just doing her job? I thought it was a silly question, and upon reflection decided it deserved a silly answer.

"I don't know that I had any when I came in here," I said.

She looked up, startled. Clearly this answer was not in the Things the Customer Is Supposed to Say handbook. "What?"

"Expectations," I said. "I'm not sure I had any when I came in." I left while she was still trying to figure out what to say to that. Hopefully I spared the next customer the question.

The company who makes my cereal proclaims that I will be "delighted" with their product. "At Health Valley, we are passionate about quality. If you are not delighted with this product, please call or write our Customer Satisfaction Team," who will no doubt tell you to buzz off. Anyway, how delighted can you be with a product that contains more grams of fiber than sugar?

Someone from Honda calls occasionally to do a customer satisfaction survey. They always say, in a confident voice, "Would you rate your experience as 'excellent'?" Normally I just say yes to keep the peace. They're happy I said yes, I'm happy the conversation is over.

But one day I didn't just say yes. "What are my other choices?" I asked the confident voice.

"I beg your pardon?" the voice said.

"What are my other choices besides 'excellent'?" I repeated. "My other Honda dealer used to give free candy bars with an oil change. That would be nice. Maybe then I could say the service was excellent."

"I'll...I'll see what I can do about that," the voice stammered.

"The really big candy bars," I said helpfully, "the king-size ones, not those little puny things people give out at Halloween."

"Plain or peanut?" the voice asked sarcastically.

"Oh --" I started to answer, but the voice was gone.

That definitely did not rate an 'excellent.'