{"id":508,"date":"2020-02-25T10:01:58","date_gmt":"2020-02-25T08:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/?p=508"},"modified":"2020-02-26T09:19:52","modified_gmt":"2020-02-26T07:19:52","slug":"my-friday-bun-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/2020\/02\/25\/my-friday-bun-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"My Friday Bun Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It is a rainy Friday morning in January, with heavy grey skies. The wind rips my clothes and the rain feels like needles against my face. It is one of those days you\u2019d rather not have gone out at all. I am on my way to a business meeting, and I\u2018ve got a few minutes to spare. What to do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Conveniently, there is a\ncaf\u00e9 just around the corner. Their ad board by the entrance stating their\npromise catches my eye: \u201cWith us, Friday feels a bun crumb better off\u201d. I\nwonder what it means, but at least there is a promise of a Friday feeling<\/em> embedded. Cosy and homey comes to my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weekend \u2026 Friday! The best\nday of the week. A Friday promise always feels nice. Surely, I am worth a bun!\nIt is Friday after all, and the workweek is almost done. Early weekend celebration.\nAnd I\u2019ve got time. I step inside and immediately sense a nice and warm\natmosphere. I feel instantly better. Maybe a bun crumb better off. Lounge music\nis playing quietly and some of the customers are working with their laptops,\nwhile sipping their coffees and munching on their \u2026 Friday buns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The employee at the counter\ngreets me friendly, and smiles. \u201cWould you like to start your weekend with a\nnice cinnamon bun,\u201d she asks me and chitchats something nice about the (awful)\nweather. A cosy vibe settles over me. I go for the bun. Indeed, now I feel many\nbun crumbs better off than a few minutes ago. Clearly, the caf\u00e9 has done their\npromise gym. The employee knows what she is doing. Says and dos are aligned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is not always the\ncase. On a daily basis, we as customers are targeted by a myriad of promises\ncompanies make. Brand promises, service promises, sustainability promises\u2026 The\nlist is long. All these promises that more often than not fail to be kept. Unfortunately,\nresearch shows that this is the name of the contemporary marketing game. And of\ncourse, as marketers we know that marketing is, among other things, about\nmaking promises. But, also about keeping them, and in practice that is often\nthe tough part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Promises are often fuzzy\nand vague. Such as: \u201cThe best service in the field,\u201c innovative service\nsolutions\u201d or \u201cbetter than our competitors\u201d. What we as customers expect, based\non these promises, varies but research shows that customers expect that\ncompanies live up to what they promise. Today companies overpromise\nheavily. I had a good Friday bun experience. I felt many bun crumbs better\noff afterwards. Even if my expectation at first was fuzzy, my experience became\nexact to the bun crumb point better off.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research shows that employees want to deliver service that is aligned\nwith what the firm promises.  Imagine yourself in the role of an employee. What does the best\nservice in the field really mean? How am I to keep a promise\nthat feels unclear, confusing or fuzzy to myself? Promises of the\nfuzzy kind do seldom motivate employees to perform accordingly: In my case the\nemployee clearly did know how to contribute to my experience.  Plus, she seemed motivated and happy. This\nmade me feel many bun crumbs better off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research shows that employees want authentic, honest and keepable promises.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Research shows that employees\nwant authentic, honest and keepable promises. Employees prefer promises that\ndescribe actual activities and atmospheres in customer interaction. Research also\nshows that employees want to participate in promise design. This does, in their\nview, ensure authentic promises that are aligned with service activities and\nvibes, such as being a bun crumb better off. At best, employee co-active\nparticipation in promise design will result in promises that have an authentic\nenergy embedded. Promises that communicate the actual feelings and vibes companies\nwant to expose to their customers.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have been chewing this \u201cbun\ncrumb better off\u201d promise quite a bit and have come to the conclusion that it\nis a nice, small and indeed a rather precise promise.  In its fuzziness and smallness. A promise the\nemployee seemed motivated to live up to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are\ninterested to know more about employees\u2019 motivation to align with promises and\nvalue propositions, please read our article: Liewendahl, H.E.,  and Heinonen, K., \u201cFrontline Employees\u2019\nMotivation to Align with Value Proposition\u201d in Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing<\/a>, ISSN:\n0885-8624, Publication date: 13 February 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helena Liewendahl
PhD, Service-strategy pedagogue <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Unsplash<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is a rainy Friday morning in January, with heavy grey skies. The wind rips my clothes and the rain feels like needles against my face. It is one of those days you\u2019d rather not have gone out at all. I am on my way to a business meeting, and I\u2018ve got a few minutes …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[14,40,29,39,41],"class_list":["post-508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cers-blog","tag-customer","tag-promise","tag-research","tag-service","tag-value"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":513,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions\/513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}