Step-by-Step: How Any Business Can Astonish Their Customers
Go beyond “satisfaction” and aim for astonishment when taking care of your customers. Follow the three-step framework I use as a magician to deliver magic in your business.
Introduction: Beyond Satisfaction
After performing magic for over 25 years and consulting with hundreds of businesses, I’ve come to the conclusion that customer satisfaction is actually the lowest bar you can set. Satisfied customers are already looking elsewhere. To create true loyalty and evangelism, you need to create genuine astonishment.
But how?
Magicians have spent centuries studying perception and psychology to create moments that leave audiences genuinely amazed. As The Business Magician, I’ve translated these timeless principles into a framework any business can use.
This guide reveals the exact three-step process for creating customer astonishment that I’ve taught to executives at NASA, SYSCO, AT&T, and hundreds of other organizations.
The Astonishment Framework
You don’t astonish customers by accident. Instead, it’s a systematic process with three critical phases:
Setting Expectations: Shaping what customers anticipate
Meeting Expectations: Authentically connecting with customers
Exceeding Expectations: Creating genuine moments of WOW
Let’s explore each step in detail…
Step 1: Setting Expectations
Why Expectations Matter
What your customers expect from you is the foundation of their entire experience. Their expectations will shape how they perceive everything that follows.
Most businesses make a critical mistake: they either ignore customer expectations entirely or try to create unrealistically high expectations they can’t fulfill. Both approaches lead to disappointment.
Action Items: Setting the Right Expectations
1. Identify Current Expectations
Conduct expectations audit: What do new customers currently expect when they first engage with you?
Look for expectation gaps: Where are actual experiences falling short?
Map expectations journey: Identify all the touchpoints where expectations are being set
2. Manage Customer Attention
When a customer first encounters your business, you have three places their attention might go:
The Product/Service (What you’re selling)
You/Your Team (Who’s selling it)
The Customer (Who’s buying it)
This is just like how I approach my magic performance — there’s the trick itself, myself as the performer, and then the audience members. I need to pay attention to all three!
For each customer interaction, you, too, need to identify which of these focal points matters most to the customer. This determines where you should direct their attention.
3. Acknowledge Assumptions
Customers come with preconceived notions about your industry, product, or service. Don’t ignore these—address them directly:
“I know what you might be thinking about [your industry]...”
“Many people assume that [common assumption]...”
“You may have experienced [negative stereotype] in the past...”
By acknowledging assumptions proactively, you take control of the narrative and can reset expectations. I do this, too, as a magician — tackle negative stereotypes of magicians head on.
4. Read Your Audience
Different customers have different needs. I teach businesses to quickly identify the four main personality types (which I call the four suits):
Diamonds: Fast-paced, warm, attention-seeking personalities
Hearts: Slower-paced, warm, relationship-focused people
Spades: Fast-paced, cool, results-oriented decision-makers
Clubs: Slower-paced, cool, analytical detail-seekers
Each type has different expectations about how you should interact with them. Identifying their type within the first 30 seconds allows you to adjust your approach accordingly. You can learn more about my Personality Magic system here (and I love teaching it to businesses…it’s transformational to teams.)
Step 2: Meeting Expectations
The Authenticity Factor
Meeting expectations isn’t just about delivering what you promised—it’s about how you deliver it. Authenticity is your most powerful tool.
While magicians may create illusions, they succeed only when they’re genuinely connecting with their audience. Audiences can feel when there’s an air of arrogance or inauthenticity coming from the performer, and it detracts from the encounter. The same principle applies in business.
Action Items: Meeting Expectations Authentically
1. Align Your Approach with Customer Type
For each personality type, adapt your communication style:
Diamonds: Be energetic, enthusiastic, and make them feel special
Hearts: Build personal connections and show you care about them as individuals
Spades: Be efficient, direct, and focused on results
Clubs: Provide detailed information and evidence to support claims
2. Focus on Effect, Not Method
Customers don’t care about your internal processes (methods)—they care about the impact on their lives (effects):
Methods are real but invisible—your internal operations
Results are tangible—your measurable output
Effects are perceived—how customers feel about the experience
Identify the ultimate effect you want customers to experience, then work backward to determine what methods and results will create that effect.
Method vs. effect is fundamental to the work of a magician. Great magicians don’t get bogged down in methods…they think about the effect they want to create and work backwards to figure out how to pull it off. This is a concept I teach to businesses in detail in my Think Like A Magician™ keynote presentations, to get organizations focusing on the right things—their ultimate effects.
3. Maintain Consistency Across Touchpoints
Ensure every interaction supports your intended effect:
Employee training: Every team member understands the desired customer perception
Communication standards: Consistent messaging across channels
Environmental elements: Physical spaces that reinforce your effect
Follow-up processes: Post-purchase interactions that maintain the perception
Maintaining consistency is at the core of what I do with my company, See Magic Live, which books vetted magicians for important events throughout the US and the world. You can learn here more about our performer standards with See Magic Live.
4. Create Authentic Connections
Authenticity requires being fully present with customers:
Active listening: Demonstrate you’re genuinely hearing their needs
Appropriate vulnerability: Share relevant challenges or stories
Values alignment: Show how your values match theirs
Genuine interest: Demonstrate curiosity about their specific situation
Sometime you’ll notice an audience member very worried about participating as a spectator in a magician’s performance. This is sometimes because they sense the inauthenticity coming from the magician, or perhaps they’ve experienced that in the past. When a magician is deeply authentic in their encounter, they gain the trust of the spectator so the spectator knows they’ll be seen and respected. The same distrust can happen in business and authentic connections are the antidote.
Step 3: Exceeding Expectations
The Psychology of Astonishment
Exceeding expectations is about creating moments that genuinely surprise and delight. This requires understanding the psychology behind astonishment.
Action Items: Creating Genuine Astonishment
1. Build Anticipation
Before delivering your “wow” moment:
Plant seeds: Hint at what’s coming without revealing everything
Create tension: Build a sense of anticipation
Use pacing: Slow down the experience slightly before the key moment
2. Craft the Perfect Reveal
Time your moment of astonishment for maximum impact:
Misdirection: Have attention focused elsewhere first
Perfect timing: Deliver your surprise at the peak moment of engagement
Appropriate framing: Present the moment in a way that maximizes its impact
3. Identify Astonishment Opportunities
Look for specific places where you can exceed expectations:
Process improvements: Where can you eliminate a pain point?
Personalization moments: Where can you demonstrate you know the customer?
Surprise elements: What unexpected extra can you provide?
Memory creation: How can you create a story worth sharing?
4. Add the “Kicker Ending”
In magic, the “kicker” is an unexpected twist that comes after the audience thinks the trick is over. In business:
Follow-up surprises: Unexpected additions after the main transaction
Personal touches: Handwritten notes or calls that weren’t promised
Ongoing value: Additional resources or benefits after purchase
Recognition: Remembering customers and their preferences on return visits
Next Steps: Your Astonishment Action Plan
Audit your current experience: Where are you setting, meeting, or exceeding expectations?
Identify your effect: What perception do you want customers to have?
Map personality types: Which customers need which approaches?
Create your astonishment moments: Where can you exceed expectations?
Measure the impact: Track changes in loyalty, referrals, and customer feedback
Remember: Creating astonishment isn’t a one-time effort. It’s an ongoing commitment to understanding perception and continuously improving how customers experience your business.
When you Think Like A Magician™—focusing on effects over methods, understanding perception, and creating moments of genuine wonder—any business can transform satisfied customers into true believers who can’t wait to share their astonishment with others.
Want to learn more about applying these astonishment principles in your organization? Contact my booking team to invite me to speak to your organization at your next big event.
