The Incomplete Answer

I recently wrote about the expected experiences gap, where the customers’ expectations—based on the experiences they have with their favorite companies—are higher than what they receive from the company they are currently doing business with.
We heard from one of our Shepard Letter subscribers, Jared Lender, who gave us another example of a gap, one that results from incomplete information. In other words, it’s the gap between the answer the customer received the first time they asked and the answer they should have received.
This may have happened to you. You reach out to a salesperson or customer support agent with a problem or a question. They give you an answer, but you find yourself having to reach out again—only to find out there was more to the answer than what they originally told you. That’s exactly what happened to Jared, although he didn’t call back—the gap in information caused him to