Dunn Tire Makes Customer Experience Design a Priority

Customers don’t care what you do. They only care what they are left with after you’ve done it. Especially with Dunn Tire and customer experience design.

Do you notice the customer experience you receive at a business you infrequently visit? With most customers, the answer is yes if the experience is bad. The extreme endpoints of the service experience. Occasionally however customers make note of a customer experience design that far exceeds expectations.

My wife and I experienced such a design at our local Dunn Tire store, where we had taken our car for our annual New York State safety inspection. I don’t know about you, but I notice a design set up like an awesome online experience, with all the information you will need all around you on the walls. Simply expressed and is very easy to speed read.

See our article on the 9 truths to improve customer experience and service design.)

What are the ways Dunn Tire uses its store design and employees to create the best possible customer experience? Consider Dunn’s explicit operations and design principles:

Educate your customers

Show the value

Create customer relationships

Stand tall on customer issues

Build trust

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 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.

Learning Center

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.

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 the lower-quality photos they take themselves.

Educating while getting the job done

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 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.

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. 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.

For as long as anyone could remember, the current and previous owners were extremely positive happy 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 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:

Be human and show your personality

Businesses are made up of people … always show your enthusiasm and passion.

Listen to me

Help me complete my visit as quickly as possible, without seeking other help, or ‘handing me off’.

Be easy to work with and exceed expectations

…whenever you can. If you don’t have what the customer wants, offer alternatives, including recommendations to other businesses.

Be honest

Always do what you say (promise). Credibility and trust really matter.

Always follow through promptly

… keep me informed until you can close.

What more design elements can be added?

What can your business apply from Disney operations that would improve your customer experience?

Please share a story about a creative customer experience design strategy with this community.

Remember, customers, create the most value for you … when you create the most value for them.

So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.

It’s up to you to keep improving your customer experience design. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.

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 to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

Do you have a lesson about making your customer experience 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. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.

Marriott Tourism Marketing Makes Customer Experience the Secret Sauce

How often do you receive a surprise ‘wow’ customer experience from a business you have selected? While it is not that often, it makes a big impact on your impression of the company, doesn’t it? As Maya says, people will never forget how ‘a company’ made you feel. And that is the Marriott tourism marketing plan where they put a focus.

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

-Maya Angelou

Brands like Marriott are not built through gimmicks or sleight of hand. The consumer can not be fooled for long. Great companies build great brands by valuing their customers and wanting to make their lives better in some way. That you must keep in mind for this story.

In the end, despite all the gimmicks and tricks that gurus use to sell books and seminars, it comes down to one simple equation: Brand Value = the value of promises kept.

Here let me backtrack momentarily. I have been a loyal Marriott customer from the start of my business career for over 45 years.

I did quite a bit of travel throughout my career and got sold on Marriott from their Rewards Program, one of the best, if not the best in the industry, early on. Of course, in addition, their properties were all consistently outstanding.

But since my retirement, I have not had the opportunity to stay with them very often.

Some more excellent marketing examples here.

But for my wife and I’s 20^th anniversary, we decided to visit Miami Beach for a couple of nights recently. For my many years of loyalty, I am a Marriott Platinum Rewards member. The most significant benefit of this is having access to the concierge lounge and upgrade to a nicer room if available.

When I called to make a reservation, the corporate reservation desk reminded me that he would request an ocean view upgrade, in case they were any available. A few days later, after thinking about it, I called the local hotel reservations desk, told them we had a reservation for 2 nights in celebration of our 20^th anniversary, and asked for a special favor for the ocean view room for this special occasion.

The reservations desk assured me they would do their best.

On our arrival at check-in, the front desk welcomed us with a warm anniversary congratulations and welcome. They said they were able to find us a very nice ocean view room. We certainly were not disappointed.

Later, upon returning from an afternoon of sightseeing and dinner on the bay, we returned to the room to receive a very nice bottle of champagne and fresh strawberries from the front desk and hotel chef. What a great surprise and ‘wow’ customer experience

The thing is this: the front line of any brand in the marketplace is not the advertising, packaging, or product design. It is the interaction that the customer experiences that determine the brand’s reputation to a large degree.

It is human and emotion, and at that critical time when a customer engages with your employees anywhere in your channels, your brand (your product and reputation) will either be enhanced or diminished. No doubt about our experience was there?

Want to know one of the most effective examples that any company can use to build its brand and create reciprocity with its customers?

By surprising them!

People like getting things for free and like them, even more, when they are viewed as ‘favors’. But even more, they love receiving these favors as surprises.

Why give away this sort of benefit as a surprise?

**Marriott tourism marketing … s*imple***

A company like Marriott (known for their quality customer experience) recognizes the benefits of surprising people with a “wow” experience.

This kind of example is justified by almost any cost, and the cost hit Marriott took by doing this is paid back multiple times over by the customer loyalty and customer word of mouth recognition they generate from making people happy.

So … a company’s brand communicates every time it touches a customer.

As a marketer, you need to manage this communication and be responsible for each ‘moment of truth’. Marriott certainly has this type of brand marketing down pat and well recognizes its value.

But our customer experience observations about this local Marriott did not end there. Here are a few more experiences we observed:

Always 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. We only saw one employee who did not smile or greet us positively.

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. Everyone at this Marriott knew their role and was more than show-ready.

Show guests fun

Everyone showed their commitment and responsibility for ensuring the property remains clean, friendly, and most of all, fun. Emphasis on pleasant and fun.

**Marriott tourism marketing … a*ssertively friendly***

All employees were ‘assertively friendly’. They sought out those who look like they need help before they come looking for help. They could not have been more helpful and friendly. It started at check-in when we were asked if we had ever been to the hotel or Miami Beach before.

When we said no … the front desk spent 5-10 minutes with a map discussing the area and things to see.

Marriott tourism marketing … employee empowerment

What Marriott is saying to its employees … if you act in support of the values that really matter to our business, we want you to take the initiative to care for our customers.

Marriott certainly knows all there is to know about customer immersion and customer experience, don’t they? It is a culture handed down by William Marriott himself.

This is a very simple concept, eh? But how many of us put such a thing into practice with our own people? Sit down today with your employees and do what Marriott did. Start building your employee empowerment culture today.

Companies that are proactively managing all elements of their customer experiences are most successful in achieving customer loyalty.

The bottom line

Attitude is the most important choice any of us will make. We made it yesterday and we get another choice to make it today. And then again tomorrow. The choice to participate. To be optimistic. To intentionally bring out the best in other people.

We make the choice to surprise, to be curious, to challenge the status quo. To give people the benefit of the doubt.

Of course, these are our attitudes. What else could they be?

What can your business apply from this Marriott operation that would improve your customer experience? Please share a story about a creative customer experience design strategy with this community. Perhaps you’d like to add a comment or ask a question?

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy 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 him on 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.

8 Ways Disney World Customer Experience is the Difference Maker

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 of any business can learn from Walt Disney 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.

Before we continue, let me ask you a question.

What customer experience design techniques work best for your business? We would love to hear what it was. Would you do us a favor and post it in the comments section below? Be the one who starts a conversation.

With the advent of the Internet, the number of marketing options available to both budding and experienced entrepreneurs has become staggering.

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 the 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.

Here is an interesting article about customer experience and the customer journey.

Disney World Customer Experience … a difference maker

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.

Know What Customers Want: Why You Should Stop Pretending to Know

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.

Disney World Customer Experience … random acts of kindness

Each employee is encouraged to offer random acts of kindness often.

Related: Random Acts of Kindness for Customer Experience Improvements

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. 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 on 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.

One of my favorite experts in the field of customer experience is Andrew McFarland and Pivot Point Solutions. You’ll find lots of good examples and case studies to learn from in this blog.

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. 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 for contributing to the positive customer experience by being as helpful and assuring as possible.

When we traveled to Australia, we frequently ran into the expression of 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 Support: Can We Learn from 3 Customer Service Cases?

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. 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, the customer creates the most value for you … when you create the most value for them.

Like this story? Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.

Please share a story about a creative customer experience design strategy with this community.

10 Laws of Customer Experience Design

Building a Customer Experience Strategy for Business Success

10 Ways to Employ Customer Experience for Influence

Customer Experience Case Studies: Ultimate Cheat Sheets to Learn From

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.

Here is a very good short video on how to build self-confidence.

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.

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.

The business lesson here?

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.

Case 2 Disney World

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.

Customer Orientation … the Worst Customer Experience Mistakes

Random Acts of Kindness for Customer Experience Improvements

7 Ways to Create a Customer Service Evangelist Business

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.

Customers don’t care what you do. They only care what they are left with after you’ve done it. Especially with Dunn Tire and customer experience design.

See our article on the 9 truths to improve customer experience and service design.)

What are the ways Dunn Tire uses its store design and employees to create the best possible customer experience? Consider Dunn’s explicit operations and design principles:

Educate your customers

Show the value

Create customer relationships

Stand tall on customer issues

Build trust

Care for Customers

Immerse Customers in Brand

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.

Learning Center

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.

Educating while getting the job done

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 cast role, and as such, is responsible to contribute to the positive customer experience by being as helpful and assuring as possible.

Show Ready

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.

For as long as anyone could remember, the current and previous owners were extremely positive happy 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 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:

Be human and show your personality

Businesses are made up of people … always show your enthusiasm and passion.

Listen to me

Help me complete my visit as quickly as possible, without seeking other help, or ‘handing me off’.

Be easy to work with and exceed expectations

…whenever you can. If you don’t have what the customer wants, offer alternatives, including recommendations to other businesses.

Be honest

Always do what you say (promise). Credibility and trust really matter.

Always follow through promptly

… keep me informed until you can close.

What more design elements can be added?

What can your business apply from Disney operations that would improve your customer experience?

Please share a story about a creative customer experience design strategy with this community.

Remember, customers, create the most value for you … when you create the most value for them.

So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.

It’s up to you to keep improving your customer experience design. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.

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 to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

Do you have a lesson about making your customer experience 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. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.

More reading on customer experience from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:

10 Laws of Customer Experience Design

What Little Things Small Businesses Can Do To Build Customer Relationships

Customer Experience Improvements Begin with Understanding Their Value

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

-Maya Angelou

Brands like Marriott are not built through gimmicks or sleight of hand. The consumer can not be fooled for long. Great companies build great brands by valuing their customers and wanting to make their lives better in some way. That you must keep in mind for this story.

In the end, despite all the gimmicks and tricks that gurus use to sell books and seminars, it comes down to one simple equation: Brand Value = the value of promises kept.

Here let me backtrack momentarily. I have been a loyal Marriott customer from the start of my business career for over 45 years.

I did quite a bit of travel throughout my career and got sold on Marriott from their Rewards Program, one of the best, if not the best in the industry, early on. Of course, in addition, their properties were all consistently outstanding.

But since my retirement, I have not had the opportunity to stay with them very often.

Some more excellent marketing examples here.

But for my wife and I’s 20th anniversary, we decided to visit Miami Beach for a couple of nights recently. For my many years of loyalty, I am a Marriott Platinum Rewards member. The most significant benefit of this is having access to the concierge lounge and upgrade to a nicer room if available.

The reservations desk assured me they would do their best.

On our arrival at check-in, the front desk welcomed us with a warm anniversary congratulations and welcome. They said they were able to find us a very nice ocean view room. We certainly were not disappointed.

Later, upon returning from an afternoon of sightseeing and dinner on the bay, we returned to the room to receive a very nice bottle of champagne and fresh strawberries from the front desk and hotel chef. What a great surprise and ‘wow’ customer experience

The thing is this: the front line of any brand in the marketplace is not the advertising, packaging, or product design. It is the interaction that the customer experiences that determine the brand’s reputation to a large degree.

It is human and emotion, and at that critical time when a customer engages with your employees anywhere in your channels, your brand (your product and reputation) will either be enhanced or diminished. No doubt about our experience was there?

Related post: Case Studies to Evaluate New World Marketing Concepts

Want to know one of the most effective examples that any company can use to build its brand and create reciprocity with its customers?

By surprising them!

People like getting things for free and like them, even more, when they are viewed as ‘favors’. But even more, they love receiving these favors as surprises.

Why give away this sort of benefit as a surprise?

Marriott tourism marketing … simple

A company like Marriott (known for their quality customer experience) recognizes the benefits of surprising people with a “wow” experience.

This kind of example is justified by almost any cost, and the cost hit Marriott took by doing this is paid back multiple times over by the customer loyalty and customer word of mouth recognition they generate from making people happy.

So … a company’s brand communicates every time it touches a customer.

As a marketer, you need to manage this communication and be responsible for each ‘moment of truth’. Marriott certainly has this type of brand marketing down pat and well recognizes its value.

People like getting things for free and like them, even more, when they are viewed as ‘favors’. But even more, they love receiving these favors as surprises.

**Marriott tourism marketing … s*imple***

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. Everyone at this Marriott knew their role and was more than show-ready.

**Marriott tourism marketing … a*ssertively friendly***

What Marriott is saying to its employees … if you act in support of the values that really matter to our business, we want you to take the initiative to care for our customers.