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Much of the previous discussion can be summarized by what I have come to call “The First Law of Service,” expressed as a formula:

SATISFACTION equals PERCEPTION minus EXPECTATION

If the client perceives service at a certain level, but expected something more (or different), then he or she will be dissatisfied.

The significance of this seemingly simple formula is contained in the observation that neither perception nor expectation necessarily reflects reality. Both are experiential, psychological states of mind. Accordingly, the central challenge to service organizations is to manage not only the substance of what they do for clients but also to manage clients’ expectations and perceptions. Consider the restaurant chain that consistently overestimates the time it will take for a table to become free. They lose some customers, but those who remain are seated before they expected: a pleasant surprise and a good beginning to the service encounter. Trivial? Perhaps, but a pleased client is easier to keep pleased than one who is in a state of annoyance and impatience because he was led to believe that service would begin earlier than it did.

My late colleague Daryl Wyckoff told the story of checking out of a hotel in San Francisco and commenting to the clerk on the beauty of the view from his room window. The next time he stayed there, he was greeted, “Welcome, Professor Wyckoff. We have assigned you the room with the view that you liked so much.”  A powerful service experience, and one that is relatively simple to arrange, given the organization’s desire to please.

The most important of perceptions and expectations is not restricted to consumer services such as these. It is possible (indeed, all too common in the professional service sector) that the professional does substantively superior work but that this is not perceived by the client. Or, in another case, the professional may invest significant amounts of time and effort in dealing with unforeseen contingencies but, because the client did not expect the contingencies, he or she is irritated by the extra delay and expense rather than thankful for the abilities of the professional.

This isn’t solely a matter of unsophisticated clients being unable to appreciate what is truly being done for them. In case after case, I have heard stories (and observed examples) of professionals so completely oriented to their own values (eg, pride in technical craftsmanship) that the clients’ true needs are placed second to the professional’s desire to create a monument to his or her technical ability. “We could do great work,” I have heard frequently, “if the client did not keep getting in the way.” Architects run the risk of falling in love with their artistic designs, lawyers with the elegance of their briefs, consultants with the sophistication of their analyses, all to the exclusion of consideration of what the client needs and expects or of how the client perceives the provider’s efforts.

The need to be “client centered” is a constant theme of modern management writings, and it is the professional service sector that is in most urgent need of hearing this message. Because of the proclivity of professionals to become more fascinated with the intellectual challenge of their craft than with being responsive to clients, all too often clients are mocked for their lack of professional knowledge, despised because of their demands, and resented because they control the purse strings and hence the autonomy of the professional.

There is an old saw in the medical profession that the three most important keys to success are availability, affability, and ability – in that order. The same profound insight can be equally well applied to other professions. In all professions, clients gripe that “they do great work, but you can never get hold of them. They don’t return my phone calls!” Another common complaint is “I wish they would keep me informed of progress. This may be just another engagement to them, but to me it’s critical. I want to know what’s going on.”

This last statement is particularly telling. People and organizations turn to professional service providers for matters of significant uncertainty, importance, and risk. It is this atmosphere of risk and importance that makes them prepared to pay the traditionally high fees of the professional service sector. Whether it is health, legal concerns, finances, office accommodations, internal organization, or advertising, clients of professional service firms are almost by definition in a state of anxiety and nervousness: They need to be confident that they are in good hands. The slogan of one rapidly growing professional service firm I have studied is “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” – a cute phrase but an important one. Clients of professional service firms want to know that they are not being lost in the shuffle. They want to know that their matter is receiving the attention it deserves. The professional service firm that is adept at projecting a caring image, and that backs the image up with a substantive reality, will do well in the marketplace.

Excerpted from ‘Managing the Professional Service Firm’ by David Maister, pages 71 to 73