Ever been to Disney World? With most of our family living 50 miles away, we often felt like tour guides. Not a bad thing though. Lots any business can learn from Disney World customer experience design and operations. A real difference maker.
Feelings have a critical role in the way customers are influenced.
- David Freemantle
Disney puts a tremendous amount of attention to its parks’ customer immersion and customer experience … in fact; one could say the Disney theme park mystique is 100% about immersing the customer in the culture of Disney movies and character history. Over 150,000 employees are employed ‘on stage’ each day at Disney parks to help create this customer experience immersion.
What are the ways Disney uses its park designs and ‘on–stage’ employees to create the best possible customer experience? Consider Disney’s explicit operations and design principles:
Care for Customers
In front of nearly every ride was stroller parking – and in Magic Kingdom, there were plenty of strollers because nearly every group had some small children. There were areas set aside for stroller parking, and clear instructions for where to park your stroller. Guess what? Customers still managed to ignore them. In most places, this might create chaos.
At Disney, they have a “stroller guy” whose entire job it was to pick up after lazy customers. We have seen them organize strollers into lines, put errant Sippy cups back into cup holders, and keep his little area of the park neat and organized. All customer-facing employees are responsible for ensuring parks remain clean, friendly, organized, and most of all, fun.
Immerse Customers in Brand
At Disney, you can’t look in any direction without seeing the Disney branding all around. In the park, it works to surround you with the Disney experience at every moment … even when some parts of the park are under construction. Not to mention the side benefit of Disney likely negotiating some discount on the construction work from businesses in exchange for allowing them to put their brand on the signage seen by millions of park customers.
Lots of help and directions
All-stage employees are encouraged to be “assertively friendly”. They are to seek out those who look like they need help before they come looking for help.
The parks at Disney are very large and directions can be confusing. The last thing customers need is to not be able to find what they are looking for. As a result, signs have to be super easy to navigate and offer simple ways to get from one place to another.
Disney does a great job keeping its signs easy to understand. They also have logical layouts for parks and plenty of places to pick up copies of maps as you’re walking around their parks.
Random acts of kindness
Each employee is encouraged to offer random acts of kindness often.
The Fast Pass system at Disney is a work of analytical art that is designed to keep people moving through attractions faster and in a more optimized way. To use it, you just insert your own park ticket and the Fast Pass will give you a specific time to return to a ride in order to board it without a wait. Only one is active at any one time, however. However, at several, you also got the unexpected surprise of a bonus ticket to a nearby (and usually less popular) ride.
Thanks to this bonus ticket, you had the chance to ride an extra ride at the same time and feel just a little better about your experience all day. A random act of kindness that costs nothing.
Be flexible with rules
Many of the rides take photos of you while you are on board. Those photos are sold to riders after the ride – a classic amusement park upselling technique. At Disney, they show you the images and put a person below those images just standing by to answer questions.
Of course, some people will just take a cell phone photo of their image instead of buying one. Many places would put up big signs preventing that. Disney, instead, puts a person there working under the photos to make it a little more socially awkward to take a photo of your photo … but they don’t outlaw it.
The result is that they probably still get a high percentage of people buying the photo who really want it, but they don’t need to have the typical rule outlawing the inevitable group of people who are happy with a lower-quality photo they take themselves.
Educating while entertaining
In many places in all the parks, Disney provides educational material on signs around the parks. This is particularly true in EPCOT and the Animal Kingdom … and special events like the annual garden show. Can’t be too much of this in our opinion.
Offer Reassurance
Everyone “on the stage” has a casting role, and as such, is responsible to contribute to the positive customer experience by being as helpful and assuring as possible.
When we traveled to Australia, we frequently ran into the expression a ‘nervous nelly’ used to represent a timid or always apprehensive person. We all know people like that. They check a map constantly even when they are going the right way, and usually find a reason to worry about something. Disney does a great job of making sure those people feel at ease, with plenty of places and people to answer questions.
Show Ready
Each customer-facing employee is expected to be “show ready” whenever they are on stage. Everyone has a part to play as a component of the show. On stage, the show is on … everyone follows costume and customer interface guidelines.
