When a Ryanair flight touches down on time a fanfare sounds over the public address system to celebrate the fact. Flights that arrive on time might be cause for celebration for the airline, but that’s no longer enough to delight most passengers.

Just twenty years ago when you made an expensive long distance phone call you probably weren’t surprised to be cut off or to experience appalling call quality at the very least. If you used Skype for free today you expected to see and hear someone who was 10,000 miles away as if she were sitting in the next room.

When everything is as near perfect as it can be the perception of what it takes to be excellent shifts. When we’re used to things working the fact that they’re working isn’t enough to ‘wow’ us anymore.

When standards rise, expectations rise with them. So if everything is good enough, where is the room to delight your customers? How can you possibly stand out and create value in an almost perfect world?

Perfect isn’t what’s scarce anymore. Your customers don’t want perfect. They want you to stand in their shoes, to see the world through their eyes and they want to be touched.

Image by Ed.