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.
It is magic.
Breaks and relaxing are ONLY allowed in areas unavailable to guests.
Disney certainly knows all there is to know about customer immersion and customer experience, don’t they? It’s a culture handed down by Walt himself.
Companies that are proactively managing all elements of their customer experiences are most successful in achieving customer loyalty.
What can your business apply from Disney operations that would improve your customer experience? Please share a story about your experience.
Remember, customers, create the most value for you … when you create the most value for them.
We are all very aware of the impact of positive thinking ideas on our success in life. But how to avoid deadly sins is another matter, isn’t it? How have you ever used checklists to improve your productivity … or perhaps your positive mental thinking? How well did they work for you?
We often use checklists to achieve our goal to create positive thinking that can see opportunity in every difficulty.
After college, I spent almost 2 years training as a naval aviator. An important element of that training was the use of checklists in the learning and refresher process. Checklist utilization remains an important part of my business life. It is always a good idea to have a helpful checklist for reminders of improvements for your business or your personal life.
You will perhaps have heard this very old story illustrating the difference between positive thinking and negative thinking:
Many years ago two salesmen were sent by a British shoe manufacturer to Africa to investigate and report back on market potential.
The first salesman reported back, “There is no potential here – nobody wears shoes.”
The second salesman reported back, “There is massive potential here – nobody wears shoes.”
This simple short story provides one of the best examples of how a single situation may be viewed in two quite different ways – negatively or positively.
I keep a stack of 10 or so checklists that I rotate and update occasionally. I pull out one checklist to read and contemplate for five minutes as a way to start each day. I find it puts my thinking in the right frame of mind. Here is one checklist example of simple reminders to improve the odds of success in any task that I or my team may be doing:
Savor life’s joys
Deep happiness cannot exist without slowing down to soak up the positives all around you.
Be forgiving
Harboring feelings of hate and meanness is horrible for your well-being.
Avoid social comparisons
Comparing yourself to someone else can be a poison to your positive thinking.
Express gratitude
When you appreciate what you love, what you love appreciates in value. If you aren’t thankful for what you already have, you will have a hard time ever being positive.
Nurture your relationships
The most positive people we know are the ones who make friends easily and work to build deep, meaningful relationships.
Develop coping strategies
It always helps to have healthy ways to cope in your arsenal.
Increase flow experiences
We define flow as a state in which it feels as if time is standing still. It occurs when you are so focused on what you are doing that you become one with the task. In this state, nothing competes for your attention.
Become an optimist
People who think as an optimist see the world as a place packed with endless opportunities, especially in tougher times.
Practice acts of kindness
Selflessly helping someone is a super powerful way to create a positive attitude.
Commit to your goals
Magical things start happening when we commit ourselves to do whatever it takes to achieve our objectives.
If you are in a business where you deal with people on a regular basis, like we are, your motivation and positive thinking need to be in ‘top gear’ (as it will usually impact most issues of the day). By spending 5-10 minute reading and thinking about the items on the checklist, you will be better prepared for the events of the day.
Do you consider your company a social commerce business? While there has been considerable hype about social commerce in the last few years, we don’t consider it new … it has been around as long as commerce. These days there are just more channels to engage customers and be social. Positive thinking is everything in this regard.
We like to discuss the importance of positive thinking tips on the success of any business, particularly those that engage with the public to a great extent. Here is a story about a nursery in our region. It is a story we like to tell because it contains some simple secrets for connecting positive thinking to employee and customer engagement.
A nursery gardener ran a business that had been in the family for two generations. The staff was happy, and customers loved to visit the store, or to have the staff work on their gardens or make deliveries – anything from bedding plants to young trees.
For as long as anyone could remember, the current and previous owners were extremely positive-thinking people.
Most folks assumed it was because they ran a successful business. In fact, it was the other way around…
A tradition in the business was that the owner always wore a big lapel badge, saying Business Is Great!
The business was indeed generally great, although it went through tough times like any other company. What never changed however was the owner’s positive thinking and attitude, and the badge saying Business Is Great!
Everyone who saw the badge for the first time invariably asked, “What’s so great about business?” Sometimes people would also comment that their own business was miserable, or even that they personally were miserable or stressed.
Anyhow, the Business Is Great! badge always tended to start a conversation, which typically involved the owner talking about lots of positive aspects of business and work, for example:
The pleasure of meeting and talking with different people every day
Reward that comes from helping staff take on new challenges and experiences
Fun and laughter in a relaxed and healthy work environment
Fascination in the work itself, and in the other people’s work and businesses
Great feeling when you finish a job and do it to the best of your capabilities
New things you learn every day – even without looking to do so
The thought is that everyone in business is blessed – because there are many millions of people who would swap their own situation to have the same opportunities of doing a productive meaningful job, in a civilized well-fed country, where we have no real worries.
And so the list went on. And no matter how miserable a person was, they’d usually end up feeling a lot happier after just a couple of minutes of listening to all this infectious enthusiasm and positivity.
It is impossible to quantify or measure attitude like this, but to one extent or another it’s probably a self-fulfilling prophecy, on which point if asked about the badge in a quiet moment, the business owner would confide:
The badge came first. Great business followed.
Key Takeaways from this story
Remember, this is the time to create remarkable experiences in order to create lasting relationships with customers. Lead with initiative … own the moment. Remember attitude is everything.
Want to see some additional tips on how to build customer relationships?
Being social with great positive thinking and attitude isn’t a new way of marketing; it’s a way of doing business.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your continuous learning?
Do you have a lesson about making your learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on continuous learning from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
10 Ways Personal Development Can Improve Long-Term Success
Creative Ideas to Build Collaborative Teams in Organizations
Peter Drucker said the customer never buys what you think you sell. A tricky meaning to Drucker’s quotation? Not really. But understanding why customers buy your products and services is certainly not straightforward. You need to put these secrets of Berkshire Hathaway customer insights to work to fully appreciate why customers make the decisions they do.
How much time do you and your business dedicate to gathering customer insights? Not enough is the answer we hear most often. One way you can find useful insights is to examine research in social psychology.
Here are 8 Berkshire Hathaway customer insights we found and that should provide useful for defining tactics with your customers.
Good Service Trumps Fast Service
Recent studies show customers cite rude, incompetent, and rushed service as their top reasons to switch brands. Almost 20% more often than slow service.
Recent customers who receive competent, knowledgeable and all-encompassing services are most likely to remember their experiences and tell friends about them.
Companies must maintain a clear and constant focus on the factors that represent the true health and sustainable growth of the company: the bond between the company and the customer.
Faster operations should only be pursued when they will result in stronger customer bonds. Anything else is a mistake, and one with lasting consequences.
In short, companies must bear in mind that the “speed of service” contains two critical elements: speed and service.
Money discussion makes customers more self-focused
When you prime people with money, they approach their social interactions in a fundamentally different way than they normally would,” said Nathan DeWall, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, who has conducted similar research on the psychology of money.
“Whereas when most people are presented with the possibility of having an interaction with another person, with anticipated rewards that accompany that, when you prime people with money, they just approach it in a socially disengaged and less rewarding manner. And this has profound consequences for their behavior.”
Research by psychologist Kathleen Vohs has shown that when people are primed with money issues, they become more self-focused. And less willing to assist others.
This fact can be used by businesses in selling luxury items. The subject of money should be avoided however with promotions associated with doing things for others (i.e. like Mother’s Day for example)
In a study from the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, researchers were able to increase the average tips that waiters received by over 23%, without significantly changing their service.
This was accomplished by having the waiter’s follow-up with a second set of mints after they brought customers their check.
Waiters that brought mints but didn’t follow-up received an average of 7% less in their tips. (See our article: How to Influence Consumer Behavior through Personalization)
And from a different perspective, it pays to remember customers’ names and important information. It turns out that people are more attentive and interested when they hear their names. When working on building relationships, use names when appropriate.
Few sounds are as pleasant as hearing our own names. And likewise, for example, nothing makes us feel less loved quite like a post-purchase email from ‘DO NOT REPLY’.
Berkshire Hathaway customer insights … time more valuable than money in brand value
New research from Stanford reveals that customers have more favorable feelings of brands they associate “time well spent” with. Memories of good time were more powerful than memories of great savings.
So, there is a reason that lowest price companies promote having a good time (such as “It’s Miller Time) rather than their lowest prices.
Forget Suze Orman. Time, Not Money, Is Your Most Precious Resource. Spend It Wisely.
MIT’s Eric Von Hippel conducted a study with the Institute of Management Sciences on the relationship of superstar customers and company innovation.
The result? Through a study of 1193 commercially successful innovations across 9 industries, Hippel discovered that 60% came from customers. (See our article: Crash Course on Turning Customer Insights into Winning Ideas)
One of the most memorable and talked about customer experiences is a surprise act of kindness.
Zappos uses this experience with great success. Without so much as a mention on their website, Zappos regularly upgrades customers to overnight shipping free of charge. A great way to brighten customers’ days.
Berkshire Hathaway customer insights … loyalty programs can still be very effective
Consumer psychologists Dreze and Nunes were able to reveal just what makes a ‘sticky’ loyalty program, across all industries.
The researchers were able to show that customers are twice as likely to stay with loyalty programs if the programs if the programs appear to already have started. Tasks that seem to be underway are more likely to be completed. (See our article: How to Use Reward Card Programs Better for Enduring Customer Loyalty)
Customers prefer stories
Storytelling is most persuading so shows the research by Greer and Brock. Their research reveals that a well-told story is one of the most persuasive forms of community.
They concluded that stories have the ability to take us to another place, permitting the story to be a marketing message without the marketing.
Conclusion
Remember, this is your time to create remarkable experiences in order to create lasting customer relationships. Lead with initiative … own the moment.
Customer engagement improvements are worth the effort.
It’s up to you to keep improving your customer engagement and relationship building performance and creativity.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your customer service?
Do you have a lesson about making your customer relationships better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
Check out these additional articles on customer service insights from our library:
Mike Schoultz likes to write about the topics that lead to small business success. He also likes to share his many business experiences. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
In this article we will examine three great customer experience case studies. Each of these cases offers some excellent points you can apply to your business that will help amplify your marketing.
Feelings have a critical role in the way customers are influenced.
-David Freemantle
Case 1 My local dentist
I’ve been with the same dentist for more than 15 years. He’s friendly, personal, and generally on time with his service schedule. I have considerable confidence in his abilities and he had my business loyalty, at least until now.
He does what I expect a dentist to do and he does it explaining all the issues and options without having to play 20 questions with him. For that reason I never thought about considering a change in service providers.
Related post: Random Acts of Kindness for Customer Experience Improvements
Then one day my wife and I started spending our winters in Florida. And now the option of finding a Florida dentist became a necessity.
The new dentist changed my entire perspective on the service expectations that I had developed over the past 15 years.
This new dentist was younger and surely ‘less experienced’. But it didn’t seem this way. He was much more personal, asked important questions, spent more time with me, and did a more thorough job.
That experience opened my eyes to the quality differences with my current dentist.
I had come to expect quality and service that was very good. But the new dentist provided something even better.
Now every time I am in need of standard dentist action, such as annual checkup, etc., I plan my appointments for our time in Florida. The Florida doctor has won my standard business.
If you are any type of service provider, never become complacent. Don’t provide standard, average or just good enough service. Always look for ways to continuously improve your service and do things better.
Because the day someone provides better results, service, or quality than you do, is the day your customers’ loyalty will dry up. Left unchanged and not corrected so too may your business.
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’s customer experience design and operations. A real difference maker.
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. Not at Disney, where 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 the 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 their 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 active at any one time 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 in 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. They don’t need to have the typical rule outlawing the inevitable group of people who are happy with lower quality photo they take themselves.
Educating while entertaining
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 at EPCOT. Can’t be too much of this in our opinion.
Offer reassurance
Everyone ‘on the stage’ has a cast 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.
Customer experience case studies … 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 and everyone follows costume and customer interface guidelines. Breaks and relaxing are ONLY allowed in areas unavailable to guests.
Disney certainly knows all there is to know about customer immersion and customer experience, don’t they? It’s a culture handed down by Walt himself.
Companies that are proactively managing all elements of their customer experiences are most successful in achieving customer loyalty. It is awesome marketing isn’t it.
Customer experience case studies … case 3 Marriott Courtyard
I stayed in a new Marriott Courtyard hotel a while back. The situation was that it was recently opened and should not have been opened until the problems were worked out and management was ready. There were many problems, believe me and it started as a significant customer failure.
But not only did the staff take care of the issues for me, the manager, once he got me back to ‘even’, continued to build the relationship with me. His techniques included exceptional, personalized service, using my name in face-to-face greetings, and continued follow-up and attention to detail. He actually made me believe I was the best customer he had ever had. Not only did I forget about the earlier problems, but I was feeling great about the entire three-day experience.
Service recovery requires remaining with your customer, through follow-up, and through unexpected contact well after the issue. All customers deserve our best service, but the ones that have a negative experience represent an opportunity to define a business.
Such an opportunity represents an opportunity to turn customers into enthusiasts and maybe even advocates. And that requires going beyond the ‘break-even’ point for that customer.
Research has shown time and time again that customers who reported a problem and were delighted with the outcome have higher satisfaction with the business than the ones who never experienced a problem. So these results show the importance of turning customer failure into full customer recovery.
Why should any company not want to seize such a great marketing opportunity?
Try it … the next time you have a customer who has had a back experience with your business. You will be amazed at the results.
Need some help in building better customer trust from your customer experiences? Creative ideas to help grow your customer relationships?
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on customer experience from our Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
