You’ve just enjoyed a seamless Amazon shopping experience. With one click, your order is placed, paid for, and enroute with real time tracking updates. Later, you apply for a personal loan at your bank, only to face a maze of forms, vague instructions, and a ‘processing time’ that feels like it belongs in another era.
These are your ‘liquid expectations’ in action — a phenomenon where exceptional service in one industry sets the bar for customer expectations across others. It’s no longer enough to be the best in your sector. Customers now compare you to every standout experience they’ve had, whether it’s with a streaming platform, a ride-hailing app, or a food delivery service. Cross-industry benchmarking is pushing businesses to adapt, or risk falling behind.
Cognitive shortcuts drive liquid expectations
At the heart of liquid expectations are cognitive heuristics, the mental shortcuts our brains use to simplify decision making.
Take the anchoring heuristic, where our brains latch onto a standout experience and use it as a benchmark. If Amazon and Netflix offer effortless speed and simplicity, why should banking or healthcare feel like an uphill climb? The expectation is set, and anything less feels subpar.
Next is the availability heuristic, which highlights how memorable experiences shape perceptions. A flawlessly timed Zomato delivery with real time tracking becomes the mental model for what smooth service should be. Any interaction that falls short feels unnecessarily complicated.
Then there’s my favourite, the effort heuristic, where we equate low effort with high quality. Services like Apple Pay and Swiggy excel by making interactions feel effortless. Conversely, anything that requires multiple steps or extensive time feels outdated — even if the offering itself is valuable.
Liquid expectations touch every industry, but some are more affected than others.
Take banking and financial services. Fintech disruptors across the globe have set the standard for app first, customer centric experiences. Traditional banks are no longer compared to each other; instead, they’re judged against the ease of booking an Airbnb or tracking a pizza delivery. If you can monitor your food order in real time, why not your mortgage approval?
Retail faces its own challenges. Customers accustomed to ASOS and Zara’s predictive shopping experiences demand similar personalisation everywhere, whether they’re buying groceries or cars. Brands that fail to deliver curated recommendations and seamless returns risk losing relevance entirely.
The Double-Edged Sword of Liquid Expectations
On one hand, liquid expectations demand re-imagining customer experiences. On the other, they pose significant challenges.
Not all industries are equipped to meet these elevated expectations. Banks must navigate compliance regulations that can slow innovation, while healthcare providers can’t prioritise speed over accuracy in life-critical scenarios.
These limitations create a perception gap where businesses appear out of touch, even if they’re simply constrained by operational realities.
Meeting liquid expectations isn’t impossible, it’s a two-step process. Identifying who is the best in class for your customer context and then an understanding of the cognitive shortcuts driving customer behaviour. Businesses don’t need to overhaul every touchpoint; instead, they can focus on high-impact areas.
Consider the peak-end rule, which shows customers judge journeys based on their most intense moment and how the journeys end. For instance, a healthcare provider that concludes every appointment with a personalised follow-up leaves a stronger impression than one that doesn’t.
Another strategy is contextualisation. What is your customer’s real context? Context determines behaviour!
Netflix and Spotify excel at offering tailored recommendations, and businesses across industries can follow suit. Whether it’s a bank suggesting savings tips depending on the life stage of a customer, context led personalisation creates the sense that “this service was made for me.”
The Road Ahead
Liquid expectations are reshaping how customers evaluate businesses across industries. They demand that organisations, cease myopic traditions and stop benchmarking themselves only against their immediate competition. The net must be cast wider. Peak interactions must be frictionless, seamless, personalised, and intuitive. While these expectations present challenges, they also offer opportunities for businesses to innovate and build deeper connections with their customers.
The question isn’t whether businesses can adapt. It’s whether they can do so fast enough to remain relevant. Because if you’re not setting the benchmark, someone else already is. And your customers? They’ve already noticed.