Promises

I’m interested in the tag lines people choose for their companies, I ponder them as I drive around reading the backs of vehicles. I’m unimpressed with the ones that promise no more than what you’d expect from their service, like a courier van that says, “We deliver on time!” as if that’s a great achievement – if your only job is to deliver something, is it really that hard to do it on time? I don’t use couriers, but if I did I think I’d keep phoning around to find somewhere that took punctuality as a given and aimed for more, like “We deliver on time with a smile!” or something.

I saw a ute yesterday that had the line “Delivering more than you expect” under the company name, and I think I like that one. Kudos to them for aiming high, at least. It raises expectations before they’ve even started work, though, which means that now they not only have to deliver more than you’d have expected in the first place, they have to deliver more than you now expect having been told they’ll deliver more than you expected. In case that sentence lost you, here it is again in picture form:

Having a client say “This finished product is exactly what I expected“ suddenly becomes a negative response to the work.

If I owned a company I think I’d choose a line like, “We try hard!” or “We’ll do the very best we can!” which doesn’t get people too excited and also allows for horrible days (“Look, I know it’s not great, but this is the best I can do at this time. As promised”). My company would not last long, but at least I could say people were warned.