When Surprise and Delight Becomes Surprise Without Delight

We’ve all heard the expression surprise and delight. The intention is that we surprise our customers with better-than-expected service.
The result is that they are delighted. But what happens when the intended surprise does not delight?
That’s exactly what happened to my friend and fellow professional speaker, Beth Terry. She has a three-bedroom home. The third bedroom is used as an office. She hired a cleaning service to clean her home, and specifically told them not to go into the third bedroom. She told the cleaning crew where she wanted them to focus their efforts for the time they were there. She also told them they had to be finished by a certain time. But what did the cleaning crew do? They decided to surprise Beth, thinking they would delight her. They went into the third bedroom and cleaned it anyway. They didn’t intend to charge her. The problem was that they