Clients Remember the Best Moment and the Last One

Imagine a private chef named Margaux Ellery who cooks dinner for 10 at the Ridgeways’ house for their 25th wedding anniversary. On the first call, Mrs. Ridgeway mentions that they spent their honeymoon in Palermo. Margaux plans five courses, and the last one is a Sicilian cassata.

Two weeks before the dinner, she emails the full menu. On the night, each course goes out on time, and the plates come back empty. The cassata goes out at 10:30 with the coffee, and Margaux does not say where it came from.

Margaux has a breakfast job at seven the next morning. So she packs up while the guests finish dessert, and she leaves the roasting pans soaking in the sink. At midnight, after the last guest has gone, Mrs. Ridgeway finds them.

In May, a friend asks Mrs. Ridgeway about her chef. “The food was lovely,” Mrs. Ridgeway says. “I was scrubbing pans at midnight, though.” The friend hires someone else.

Suppose instead that Margaux emails the menu with one course left off. “I’d like to keep dessert a surprise, if you’ll trust me with it,” she writes. Mrs. Ridgeway tells her husband that evening, and the two of them guess at it all week.

On the night, Margaux waits for the toasts. Then she brings out the cassata herself. She tells the couple that it is from Sicily, in honor of their honeymoon. Mr. Ridgeway laughs, and Mrs. Ridgeway puts a hand to her mouth.

Margaux stays until the last guest leaves. When Mrs. Ridgeway walks into the kitchen at midnight, it is clean. Two slices of cassata sit in the fridge, with the evening’s menu written on a card.

In May, the same friend asks about the chef. “Use Margaux,” Mrs. Ridgeway says. “She surprised us with a cassata for our honeymoon, and I walked into a clean kitchen at midnight.” The friend books Margaux that week.

Margaux cooked the same five courses both times. What changed were two moments. In the first version, the cassata was one more course. The last thing Mrs. Ridgeway saw was a sink full of pans. In the second, the cassata was the best moment of the evening, and Mrs. Ridgeway had looked forward to it all week. The evening ended in a clean kitchen. Those two moments are what she told her friend about.

So decide before each job which moment will be the best one, and what the client will see last. Here is why those two moments count most, how two professionals build them, and where it goes wrong.

People remember a past experience by its strongest moment and its end

People judge a past experience by a few of its moments, not by how long it lasted. A later study showed which moments count most. In 1996, Donald Redelmeier and Daniel Kahneman studied what patients remembered about two medical procedures. They recorded each patient’s pain as it happened. Afterward, each patient judged how painful the whole procedure had been.

The patients’ answers followed two moments most closely, the worst pain and the pain in the last three minutes. A long procedure was not remembered as much worse than a short one.

Those were patients in pain, and the step to a client’s good evening is the course’s own. Here is the step. When a client tells a friend about you, they describe the strongest moment of the job and how it ended. The hours in between count for less. So the best moment and the last one are worth planning. Those are the parts of the job a friend hears about.

Planning them is mostly a matter of choosing. Margaux cooked the same five courses both times. In the second version, she chose which course would be the best moment. She also chose what Mrs. Ridgeway would see last. The rest of the job still has to go as you promised, because a broken promise is news too.

An Atlanta designer keeps clients out of the house until the reveal

In 2020, Business of Home asked six designers how they go the extra mile when they show a client the finished project. Nina Nash Long is a designer in Atlanta. Her firm does not let the client into the house while the furniture goes in. “The element of surprise really builds anticipation,” she said.

When the work is done, the firm turns on some music and opens the door to the client. “We love to walk around with them, a glass of Champagne in hand, and show the final results,” Nash Long said. “Tears are pretty typical at this point.”

Her client knows that the reveal is coming but has not seen the finished rooms. A client who knows something good is on its way looks forward to it, so the wait becomes part of the job. Then the best moment happens with the designer there to show it.

Champagne is what many designers pour, and another designer in the same roundup brings it too. The part of the reveal that comes from her own work is the walk through the finished rooms. The client sees them for the first time, with the person who made them. So tell the client when they will see the result, and keep the finished work back until then.

A London wedding photographer handed over the album in person, and three women cried

Mike Smith is a wedding and portrait photographer in London. In 2017, he wrote for Fstoppers about the end of one wedding job. The couple’s package included one photo book. Smith made two books instead of one, and he added a USB stick of photos, “beautifully packaged.”

He kept them for a meeting with the bride. “I wanted to make the bride feel special by giving it to her at the post-wedding meeting,” he wrote. The meeting was in a coffee shop. When he handed the book over, the bride started crying. Then her matron of honor cried, and then his second shooter.

He gives his reason for adding a little more than the package promised. “We all like to feel we’ve received more than we’ve paid for,” he wrote.

For a wedding photographer, the wedding is over long before the job is. The last moment of the job is the album. Smith made that moment a meeting, so the book arrived in his hands and not in a box at the door. The extra book was more of the work the couple hired him for.

Why a surprise about a choice goes wrong

Imagine a florist named Wilhelmina Strand who does the flowers for the engagement party of Mrs. Achebe’s daughter. Mrs. Achebe chose pale pink peonies for the 12 tables. Wilhelmina wants the finished tables to be a surprise, so she plans to set them before Mrs. Achebe arrives.

The week before, the peonies are gone for the season. Wilhelmina is busy with two weddings, and she does not want to spoil the surprise. So she uses deep red garden roses and says nothing.

When Mrs. Achebe walks in, she stops at the door. “They’re beautiful,” she says. “They’re just not what we chose.” In the spring, she books another florist for the wedding.

Wilhelmina’s plan was a good one. Her mistake was keeping back a choice along with the finished tables. A surprise about a choice takes the decision away from the client. So the course’s rule is to keep back only the finished whole, never a choice the client made. Its reason is that the client hired you to carry out their choices.

The version that works calls the week before. “The pale peonies are finished for the season,” Wilhelmina says. “I’d use pale pink garden roses instead. Is that all right?” Mrs. Achebe says yes. The finished tables are still a surprise when she walks in.

Planning the best moment is not putting on a show

Some clients do not like fuss, and some professionals do not either. Music and Champagne at a reveal can feel like a performance that a private client did not ask for.

Fernanda and Sophia Loyzaga, designers in Mexico City, answered the same Business of Home question, and their projects have no surprise reveal. “There are no surprises in terms of decoration since the entire project is done hand in hand with the client,” they said. They still plan the ending. At the end of a project, the client receives a book of the plans and drawings. With it comes a framed sketch, drawn by hand.

“The sketch is made at the beginning of the project, so it’s always a nice surprise to receive it framed at the end,” they said.

That ending came from the first day of the work, and it needed no music. So for a client who dislikes fuss, keep the moment quiet, and still choose it. Margaux’s clean kitchen was a quiet ending too.

How to plan the best moment and the last one

1. Before each job, choose the moment when the client will first see the result. Write it in your plan with its day and hour. For example, a home organizer might choose six on Friday, when Mrs. Lyle comes home to the finished garage.
2. Settle every choice with the client before that moment. If something you agreed has to change, call the client before you change it. Keep back only the finished whole.
3. Tell the client when the moment will be, and ask them to wait for it. For example, an event planner can say, “Everything you chose is in place. I’d love you to walk in at six, before the guests, and see the room finished.”
4. Be there at the moment, and walk the client through the result yourself. For example, a specialist realtor might hand over the keys at the house rather than at the title office. Then she walks the buyers through the empty rooms.
5. Decide what the client will see last. Finish the clearing up, the packing, and the paperwork before that moment, or after the client has gone. For example, a dog walker caring for a dog while the family is away might plan the family’s homecoming. They come home to a walked dog, the lead on its hook, and a note on how the week went.
6. When the work ends with something you hand over, hand it over in person where you can. For example, a tutor can bring the term’s report to the last session. Then he goes through it with the parents, instead of emailing it.

Next: You will see why the experience you build starts from what working with you feels like, not from what a competitor offers.