Editorial
Case Study
Why So Many Digital Modernization Efforts Stall
The Gist
- Guests arrive with norms, not precise expectations. Most travelers evaluate experiences against internal baselines shaped by prior encounters, pricing signals and brand reputation rather than a clearly defined set of expectations.
- Hospitality brands engineer those norms. Through service blueprints, operational standards and environmental signals, hospitality companies intentionally shape the baseline guests use to judge the experience.
- Small signals recalibrate the entire experience. Minor operational details can reset the internal baseline in real time, explaining why small inconsistencies sometimes shape how an entire stay feels.
- The lesson for CX leaders is norm design. Understanding the difference between expectations and norms changes how organizations should design customer experience, shifting the focus from promise management to baseline engineering.
Editor’s note: You walk into every experience carrying an invisible scorecard — and you didn't fill it out. In Part 1 of this series, we explore why the hospitality industry's obsession with "managing expectations" misses the point entirely, and what a plate of stadium nachos at a premium resort reveals about how perception actually works.
Table of Contents
- The Premium Hotel That Made Me Question Customer Expectations
- When Perception Trumps Reality in Customer Experience
- Customers Have Norms, Not Expectations
- Why the Customer Experience Industry Talks About Expectations
- Customers Simply React to Experiences, Not Expectations
- Expectations Framework Obscures What Actually Shapes Perception
- Experience Perception Forms Faster Than Most CX Frameworks Function
- The CX Lesson in Identical Glasses of Wine
The Premium Hotel That Made Me Question Customer Expectations
I returned home recently from a family vacation at Universal Studios Florida. My wife and I stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel with our two children, which Universal labels as a “Premier” (top-level/premium) hotel. The stay was good in many ways. The room was clean. The staff was consistently warm and helpful. Check-in moved quickly. The property runs with clear operational discipline.
Yet the stay never fully felt like the "premier" resort the brand signals.
Small details kept interrupting the illusion.
The rooms were just standard rooms. They still want to charge $8 for a bottle of water. It was just…regular, not "premier" by any definition. OK…here’s another example that is admittedly a first-world problem: I ordered some nachos at the poolside restaurant.
What arrived was a plate covered in bright orange liquid cheese that looked like it came from a concession stand pump. The dish was disgusting. I was not looking for gold-plated tortilla chips. Yet at a hotel positioned as a premier resort, the norm would suggest something slightly elevated. Real cheese. A thoughtful garnish. Something that signals the kitchen cares about the details.
Instead, the plate looked like stadium food or something you might get at a gas station.
When Perception Trumps Reality in Customer Experience
That moment may sound trivial, but it exposed something important. The hotel clearly wanted guests to perceive the experience as premier. The pricing, the design, and the brand all signal a certain tier of hospitality.
Yet the nachos contradicted that signal (as did several other, small details).
On the flight home, I began thinking about why these small moments stood out so strongly.
Customer experience professionals spend enormous energy discussing expectations. Organizations train staff to set them. Surveys ask customers whether they were met. Entire measurement systems depend on the concept.
But during that trip I could not remember forming any specific expectations at all.
In fact, I have disliked the word since childhood. I used to believe the only reliable path to disappointment in life was to live with expectations. Remove them, and disappointment disappears.
Over time I realized that view is incomplete. People clearly carry some internal reference point into every experience.
Yet something about the language still bothers me.
Most people cannot describe their expectations before an experience begins. Guests rarely arrive at a hotel with a checklist for the lobby design, the greeting script at check-in, or the ingredients used in the nachos. And I know…you’re reading this and thinking “of course I have expectations.”
But, hear me out…
People recognize problems only when something feels wrong. Or later, when they reflect on the experience. That realization points to a better explanation.
Related Article: The New King of Customer Experience? McDonald's. Seriously.
Customers Have Norms, Not Expectations
People do not enter experiences with precise expectations. They enter with norms.
Norms are the quiet baselines formed through prior experiences, category standards, price signals and brand reputation. They define what a situation like this should generally feel like. When something drifts outside that baseline, the brain notices immediately.
Understanding that distinction raises a deeper question for the hospitality industry. If no governing body defines what counts as a premier hotel, who decided what the norm for a premium stay should feel like in the first place?
The answer reveals something important about how hospitality experiences are designed and why the language of expectations often misleads customer experience teams.
Why the Customer Experience Industry Talks About Expectations
Customer experience teams did not invent the language of expectations. The concept came from academic research in the late twentieth century, most notably Expectancy-Disconfirmation Theory. The model proposed a simple explanation for customer satisfaction. Customers carry expectations into an experience. They compare the actual performance against those expectations. Satisfaction emerges from the gap between the two.
If performance exceeds the internal standard, satisfaction increases. If performance falls short, dissatisfaction follows.
Webinar
Mar
24
Operational Efficiency in Government: Delivering Modern Service on Real-World Budgets
See how state and local agencies use AI to cut costs, boost efficiency and deliver modern service to citizens.
Register
Webinar
Mar
24
Beyond Modernization: Engineering a Secure, Mission-Critical Contact Center
A straight conversation for leaders who need to build an operation that's actually ready for AI.
Register
Webinar
Mar
25
Content Leaders Collective: Navigating Content Decisions at Scale
Discover how content leaders are modernizing content operations, avoiding costly missteps and preparing for scale and AI.
Register
Webinar
Mar
26
New Research on AI for CX: What Consumers Want, What Enterprises Prioritize and Where the Gap is Growing
Based on Ada's 2026 survey, this session explores evolving expectations for AI-powered CX.
Register
Webinar
Mar
26
Do Learning Programs Really Work? How to Turn Education Into Engagement In Healthcare
See how leaders are using learning programs to build trust with healthcare professionals and create measurable engagement.
Register
Webinar
Mar
31
The Repeat Contact Problem: The Back-Office Answer
NiCE and Aberdeen reveal the real CX issue and how top teams fix it.
Register
The model appealed to researchers and executives because it translated an emotional response into something measurable. Organizations could survey customers before and after an interaction, compare the results and calculate whether expectations were met. Entire measurement systems grew around this logic. Many satisfaction surveys still include some version of the same question: did the experience meet your expectations?
The problem is that the model assumes (and I HATE assumptions; a story for another day) something that rarely exists in the real world.
It assumes people walk into experiences with a clearly defined mental specification.
In practice, most customers do not arrive with a detailed checklist. Guests rarely stand at the front desk thinking about whether the greeting script matches a predefined expectation. They do not evaluate the lobby lighting against a mental blueprint. Most could not even describe what they expected from the nachos before the plate arrived because they likely didn’t give it a second thought.
Expectations vs. Norms in Customer Experience
This table summarizes the central idea of the article: guests rarely enter an experience with a defined checklist of expectations. Instead, they rely on internal norms shaped by prior experiences, brand signals and contextual cues.
| Concept | What It Means | Why It Matters for CX |
|---|---|---|
| Guests arrive with norms | Travelers rarely carry precise expectations into an experience. Instead, they rely on internal baselines shaped by past experiences, category standards and brand signals. | Customer reactions are typically comparisons against what feels normal for a situation rather than against a predefined expectation. |
| Hospitality brands shape the baseline | Hotels and resorts intentionally design environments, service choreography and operational standards that establish what a stay should feel like. | These signals influence how guests interpret every detail of the experience, from check-in to room service. |
| Small signals recalibrate perception | Minor operational details — food quality, cleanliness, service gestures or design touches — can quickly raise or lower the internal baseline guests use to judge the experience. | Seemingly small inconsistencies can disproportionately shape satisfaction when they contradict the environment’s signals. |
| The strategic lesson for CX leaders | Managing expectations alone is insufficient. Organizations must design the norms customers use to evaluate the experience. | Customer experience strategy should focus on baseline engineering — ensuring every signal reinforces the level of experience the brand intends to deliver. |
Customers Simply React to Experiences, Not Expectations
They simply react.
This gap between theory and reality has been visible in the research for decades. One of the most cited studies on the topic compared different comparison standards used when evaluating experiences. The researchers tested three possibilities: brand-specific expectations, category norms based on prior experiences and the standard set by the best option a person had encountered before.
The results were revealing. Experience-based norms predicted satisfaction just as well as stated expectations, and in some cases performed better. The implication was clear. People were not comparing the experience against a precise prediction. They were comparing it against what felt normal for a situation like this.
That insight connects to an even older body of research known as Adaptation Level Theory. The theory explains how people establish a baseline for evaluating new stimuli. Instead of using a fixed expectation, the brain forms an adaptation level based on accumulated experiences and contextual signals. That adaptation level becomes the reference point used to judge what happens next.
In simpler terms, the brain maintains a moving baseline for what counts as normal.
A guest who frequently stays in luxury hotels develops a higher baseline for service, design and food quality. A traveler accustomed to budget hotels carries a different baseline into the same environment. Both guests may experience the same interaction, yet evaluate it differently because their internal reference points differ.
This helps explain why the language of expectations often produces confusing data. Surveys ask customers what they expected, but most people construct the answer after the experience has already occurred. Psychologists refer to this as hindsight bias. When the stay feels positive, people remember expecting something good. When the stay disappoints, they report that expectations were higher.
The response reflects the outcome rather than the original mindset.
Related Article: Medallia Report Finds the Customer Experience Gap Is Getting Worse
Expectations Framework Obscures What Actually Shapes Perception
Despite these limitations, the expectations framework continues to dominate the customer experience field. It offers a clean narrative that organizations can operationalize. Set expectations clearly. Train staff to meet them. Measure whether customers believe they were fulfilled.
The approach is convenient, but it obscures the mechanism that actually shapes perception.
Customers do not arrive with stable expectations. They arrive with norms shaped by prior experiences, category conventions and brand signals. Those norms form the baseline against which every detail of the experience will be judged.
Once that baseline exists, even small signals can recalibrate it.
And that is where the hospitality industry begins to operate very differently from the way most customer experience frameworks describe the process.
Experience Perception Forms Faster Than Most CX Frameworks Function
Once a guest arrives at a hotel, the evaluation process begins almost instantly. Long before the room key appears, the brain is already deciding what kind of stay this will be.
Most customer experience frameworks describe satisfaction as something calculated after an interaction. The guest experiences the service, compares it with expectations, and then decides whether the experience was good or bad.
Reality works differently.
Perception begins forming the moment the environment provides its first signals. The brain absorbs dozens of cues in seconds. Lighting, sound, layout, staff posture, cleanliness and even scent all feed into a rapid assessment of the environment. These signals establish the baseline against which everything that follows will be judged.
Psychologists often describe this as a process of assimilation. The brain attempts to align what it perceives with the context surrounding it. When signals suggest a premium environment, the mind interprets details through that lens. Minor gestures feel intentional. Ordinary service interactions can feel elevated.
When the signals conflict, the effect reverses.
A single inconsistency can disrupt the interpretation the brain has begun constructing. The experience no longer feels coherent. The guest may struggle to identify exactly what is wrong, yet the sense that something is slightly off becomes difficult to ignore.
The CX Lesson in Identical Glasses of Wine
Neuroscience research illustrates how powerful these contextual signals can be. In one widely cited study, participants tasted identical wines labeled with different prices. When subjects believed the wine was expensive, activity increased in the region of the brain associated with experienced pleasure. The wine literally tasted better, even though the liquid was the same.
The signal changed the perception.
Hospitality environments operate in much the same way. Pricing, architecture, brand reputation and service choreography signal a certain level of quality before the guest experiences the core product. Once that signal is established, the brain interprets subsequent details relative to that context.
This explains why small inconsistencies stand out so sharply in premium environments. The internal baseline rises quickly once the setting signals a higher tier of experience. Details that might pass unnoticed elsewhere become visible because they contradict the context already forming in the guest’s mind.
The nachos at the Hard Rock Hotel illustrate the point. In a stadium or casual sports bar, bright orange cheese might register as normal. Within a resort positioned as premium, the same plate appears careless.
The food did not change.
The context did.
Understanding this dynamic helps explain why hospitality companies devote enormous attention to environmental design and service choreography. These elements do more than decorate the experience. They shape how the guest interprets everything that follows.
Once perception begins forming, the rest of the stay unfolds relative to that baseline.
Which raises the next question: If perception begins forming almost instantly, how do hospitality brands design environments that consistently signal the level of experience they want guests to perceive?
And we'll explore that in Part 2.
Learn how you can join our contributor community.