Stephan Engl

Experience Anchoring

design

A blue departure board at a German train station shows destinations, platform numbers and multiple delay messages.

A train arriving on time should not be a memorable event. But sometimes it is.

With Deutsche Bahn, a smooth journey does feel like a small success to me. Not because anything exceptional happened, but because nothing went wrong: no delay, no cancellation, no unexpected change. Just a “normal” journey.

Why does normal become something worth noticing?

There is some context behind that feeling: In July 2026, 52.6% of Deutsche Bahn’s long-distance trains met its operational punctuality definition.1 A train counts as punctual when it arrives less than six minutes late.

Switzerland provides a different reference point: Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB) reported 91.8% long-distance punctuality in July 2026.2 But the standards are different: SBB counts a train as punctual when it arrives less than three minutes late. SBB is not only stricter in its definition of punctuality, it also reports 1.75x the punctuality rate of Deutsche Bahn.

But the way we experience a service is not only shaped by what happens or how it is measured. It is also shaped by what we have learned to expect. Research on expectancy and satisfaction suggests that we evaluate performance relative to our expectations.3

A service does not only create an experience through its performance. Over time, it also shapes the anchor against which future experiences are judged.

Perhaps that is the nature of service experiences: repeated failures can lower the anchor, while consistent reliability can raise it.

When should experience designers shape the anchor, rather than only improve the experience?

  1. Deutsche Bahn publishes its punctuality figures and explains its measurement approach in Pünktlichkeitswerte (in German). The page documents DB’s punctuality definition and the reported long-distance punctuality figures. 

  2. SBB documents long-distance train punctuality in Punctuality. The page reports 91.8% long-distance punctuality for July 2026 and explains SBB’s stricter definition: a train is punctual when it reaches stations less than three minutes late. 

  3. Schiebler, Tom, Nick Lee, and Felix C. Brodbeck examine how expectations influence satisfaction in Expectancy-disconfirmation and consumer satisfaction: A meta-analysis, published online in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science in 2025. The meta-analysis covers 150 records comprising 168 independent studies and 58,597 participants.