In February, I wrote a post that triggered a bit of a debate. I posed the question, "Exceeding expectations or solving customer problems: What's more important?" You may have seen it here, on Customer Experience for Profit, or over at CustomerThink where my blog is in syndication. 

The post was inspired by a Forbes article by Robert Passikoff of Brand Keys entitled, "The Final Frontier: Customer Expectations." My post received more than a dozen comments from customer experience and brand thought leaders Robert Passikoff, Bob Thompson, Hank Barnes, Ian Williams, Maz Iqbal, Joseph Michelli and David Jacques. Comment after comment we see that both are important. And I shared a belief drawn from many years of work at Aveus: a need must be solved before a delightful surprise translates to meaningful value. 

Last week I caught up with Stan Phelps via Skype to continue the conversation. Stan crowd sourced 1001 examples of brands that deliver something unexpected, and created What's Your Purple Goldfish?, so no surprise - we had many ideas to exchange. Here is Part One of our discussion:

It’s spring (here in the northern hemisphere). Long past your New Year’s resolutions and well into your annual objectives to strengthen your organization’s customer experience and, in turn, its performance. How’s it going?

In case you missed it, Larry Downes wrote a Forbes article in January titled, “Why Best Buy Is Going Out of Business…Gradually.” He caused quite a stir.

Yes, it’s true. The CEForProfit blog, where I’ve been writing about customer experience for 3 years, is relocating this week. Now you’ll find me blogging about customer experience and other performance topics at the online home of my business, Aveus.

Let’s say you set out to improve your company’s customer experience to drive better organization performance (kudos to you). What will be more important in attaining that goal: exceeding customer expectations, or solving customers’ problems?