Competition in the market is fierce. And if you’re playing a game where the winner is the one who gives the best customer service then it’s easy to understand why you might be seduced to try and exceed your customer’s expectations in an attempt to beat the competition. Except that the winners aren’t even playing that game.

If you and your competitors are constantly trying to exceed each other by exceeding your customers expectations then your customers expectations are quickly going to up-rate themselves and in no time at all your exceptional service is just a hygiene factor.

And around the corner, the winners are playing a different game. They’re not competing on service because they know that’s the old game, they know that great service is just the table stake required to even play the new game.

The new game is Experience. Not how pretty your app looks, no not U.X., not that kind of experience. The new game is how people feel.

If you can delight a customer, they’ll tell their friends, and the stories that spread are the stories that win.

You’ll be forgiven for trying to play the new game by the old rules, but the harsh reality is that your great customer service isn’t going to delight your customer. Since the 1950’s the service economy has systematically trained your customers to expect great service. Great service is now the normal kind of service, not something to talk about. The only kind of service that gets talked about these days is the bad kind.

Great experiences don’t need to exceed expectations the way great service aims to. To be great an experience merely needs to be Re.Mark.Able at a few key moments.

A great experience is mostly hospitality (making people feel welcome, safe, seen; being polite and so on) punctuated by a few remarkable moments. One or two carefully designed moments that are worthy of being remarked upon.

One or two moments that create stories, that will spread, that will win.