Everyone has a product to sell, whether it's fashionable clothing, sports gear, heavy equipment, grass seed, or deodorant. When you buy this product, and pay for it with your hard-earned money, you expect it to do everything it's supposed to do. Sports cars are supposed to be sleek and speedy; fresh orange juice should taste like it came from the orchard; and darn it, Viagra is supposed to fulfill that special function for men. Should you expect any less from a service?

Services are the new products, after all. Services by themselves don't usually some kind of tangible result like a book, a car, or a new golf club. Services are the use of skills and knowledge to do work for you. By rights, services should be able to fulfill certain expectations, just like the advertised features of any product. Services can be measured on timeliness, cost, and quality. If any of these three measurements aren't met, you'll have an unhappy customer.

For example, what do you do if you buy a new car that starts burning oil after you leave the car lot? You sure don't sit back and stew silently - you take it back to the car dealer and demand that it be fixed immediately. You should be able to expect that your new car will use oil without problems.

Let's apply this concept to things like daycare, home renovations, or cooking lessons. Look at the services that you experience and consider the following questions:

(1) Did the service start and stop according to my expectations?
(2) Did the service's costs meet my expectations?
(3) Did the service provide everything that I expected?

If you answer "No" to any one of those questions, take a moment to ensure that your expecations were based on what the seller advertised. If your expectations were reasonable and the seller didn't deliver, then go get 'em, tiger! Nobody wants a car that burns oil, either figuratively or literally.

Learn more about this author, Mark Dykeman.
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