The space between the best services, often what a new customer receives and the worst experience, is what I call the Experience Gap. As a business owner your goal needs to be having no gap at all, optimizing every point of contact with your customer. As the gap grows, so will your customer’s dissatisfaction.

I recently experienced this myself on two different occasions. The first was a negative experience with a store where I had shopped for a long time—Best Buy. The second was an outstanding experience with Cirque de Soleil in Las Vegas.

I was shopping for a voice-to-text software program that allows me to dictate into the computer and have it translated into text—one of the important tools that I am using to write this book. My amazing Twitter followers recommended a particular brand and I found the title at Best Buy, one of my favorite electronic superstores. The title was on sale and therefore sold out there, so I decided to take the trip across the street to a competing retailer, Future Shop.

One of the things that both of these stores offer their customers is price matching—meaning that they will match a competitor’s pricing. I was not a new customer to Future Shop, having bought multiple high-ticket items from them in the past. I went in and found the software I was looking for. Unlike Best Buy, they didn’t have it on sale, so I grabbed a copy, found a sales associate and requested that they price-match the $49 instead of its sticker price of $119.

The associate did not look impressed at all at my suggestion. I would describe the reaction more like one of contempt and frustration. Apparently, making my request for price-matching was going to be quite a chore. She went as far as to tell me that she would have to call Best Buy to see if they had any in stock because that was the only way they would be willing to price-match. Even though I explained that it was only because Best Buy was sold out that I was even in her store, she spent 15 minutes finding a Best Buy location with the software on its shelves. So, finally she agreed to do the price-match and scanned the software into the computer. Turns out they had the software on sale as well but no one had bothered to change the sticker price.

She did so many things wrong. It wasn’t the fact that she had to follow company policy that was frustrating to me. I understand why these policies are in place, having worked in retail for a long time. I know the game. It was her attitude that changed my experience. People need to know this.

Just like the story I related in the beginning of this book, a single person can affect a customer’s experience—this can happen for the good, as was the case with Wes at the Wynn, or for the bad. Now please understand this wasn’t even a really big deal, the sales rep at Future Shop didn’t yell at me or throw something at me. It wasn’t like some of those outrageous stories I have heard, or seen, or even experienced myself in stores. What it is, is a really good example of a place not backing up what they claim to offer customers in a real day-to-day experience. In the end the store matched the price, but part of being a satisfied customer is being happy with the experience as well, not just the result.

I could probably write an entire book, as I am sure could you, just talking about the day-to-day experience of customers. The sad realization is that average customer service is actually below average. Unfortunately, most of the time you feel like a king for just getting your expectations met! When the bar is set so low, there really should be no excuse for any company not to exceed customer expectations.