All fall down?

The 1993 movie 'Falling Down' starts with Michael Douglas' character at the end of his tether as he walks across sweltering downtown LA. Hungry, he visits a fast food restaurant. All he wants is breakfast. But it's 11:33am and the counter staff say breakfast stopped at 11:30. They ignore his pleading, so beneath glossy images of juicy burgers and mouth-watering salads he orders a Whammyburger instead. But the food tastes like cardboard and looks nothing like the pictures. That's when he pulls out a machine pistol and starts shooting. It's a bit extreme, but we know how he feels.

No matter how much time and money you invest in promotion, small make-or-break experiences stick in your customers' minds. Financial Times journalist Michael Skapinker recently described how a researcher from printer and computer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard called for his views on the 'big business issues' for 2005. Skapinker's 'big issues' were the series of small, unresolved problems he'd had with their hardware and service which reduced his productivity.

In the past Britain's customers were renowned for patience, suffering poor service without complaint. But this is changing. Retail and trade customers are rebelling. Their expectations are rising, and if they don't get what they want they go somewhere else. Thankfully, they don't pull out a gun to make their point. but what seems small, or even trivial to you, may look different to your customers and past customers.

Are you keeping up with their expectations and delivering what you promise? Substitute bricks for burgers and blocks for salad. Do your customers' experiences on the phone, on the website, over the counter in your depot or on site, live up to your marketing? And before you nod and say yes, of course, how do you know?

Do you systematically make the effort to find out? Sometimes it's just a matter of asking questions and watching. Or more formally researching the gap between what your customers' expect and what they experience. But rising expectations, the changing needs of their business and rival firms competing for their custom open and close those gaps even if you continue to do what you have always done. As they warn of financial products: the past is no guide to future performance.

Are you falling down on customer expectations? Those 'little' issues could be bigger than you think.