Your customer's first experience with you should be their worst.

My hair is ridiculous and grows at the speed of light. I’m also a bit frugal, being a recent graduate (and a generally cheap prick.) Instead of paying $30+ in the city I live in, I wait until I visit my parent’s in my small hometown where I can get a comparable cut at half the price.

This visit however, I’ve been offered an even cheaper cut at a new place that has some great recommendations from a close friend of mine. Sounds great — although I am very skeptical because my hair is like a child to me and I am terrified to try somewhere new.

This barber has himself and an associate, and he personally offered to cut my hair. He’s got to be the better of the two, right? Right.

Then I started thinking, “what if I came back and he couldn’t cut my hair? How can I judge this place if I’m not sure what to expect next time?”

Although this goes against all conventional thinking, I firmly believe that your customer’s first experience with you should be their worst. Take the above scenario with its two possible outcomes:

I get the better barber. My second visit is with the worse one. My experience is worse relative to my first.

or,

I get the worse barber. My second visit is with the better one. My experience is better relative to my first.

The second scenario is similar to the service recovery paradox.

The service recovery paradox states that a customer who receives over-the-top recovery in their service is actually more satisfied and loyal than someone who simply got great service off the bat.

It’s all about expectancy, really.

But there is a catch: if I get worse service the first time and it’s really bad, I likely won’t come back.

If I visit once and my service is great — and enough for me to return — I will set my expectations at that level. On my second visit, if my service is even better, I have a much higher chance of becoming a long-term loyal customer.

So what’s the takeaway?