Managing Customer Expectations with Jagdish Sheth (Coursera)

There are three strategies to manage customer expectations: abandon the customer, accommodate the customer, and adjust customer expectations. Since not all customers are profitable, one must link managing customer expectations with profitability outcomes.

Course 3 of 4 in the Customer Centricity with Professor Jagdish Sheth Specialization.

Skills You Will Gain

1. Learn how to segment based on customer expectations

2. Understand why customers’ attitudes are becoming more divergent

3. Understand why shaping customer expectations requires a unique skillset

4. Learn from human resource functions how to shape customer expectations in the same way that HR shapes employee expectations

5. Understand why abandoning customers with unrealistic expectations improves the bottom line

Syllabus

WEEK 1

How to Manage Diverging Customer Expectations (parts 1 and 2)

Customer expectations are increasingly divergent. Therefore, companies must learn how to manage diverging expectations in addition to exceeding customer expectations. We are very selective with recruiting employees and we need to similarly be selective when choosing customers. Customer selectivity is very key for managing customer expectations and we need to learn to “fire” customers. For instance, airlines have banned unruly customers.

WEEK 2

How to Manage Diverging Customer Expectations (parts 3 and 4)

This module suggests how human resource practices and employee selection and retention can be an effective analog for customer selection and customer retention. Employee selectivity, career development, promotion, and retirement are useful to apply to customer selectivity, customer lifetime value, customer promotion, and customer retirement.