Disney-fy Your Small Business

Have you noticed there’s a decline in customer and client service today in America?

via GIPHY

Some times it’s a gradual, seemingly harmless decline that’s not easily noticed, but it has a grave effect on your profits.

Think about a magic show.  We all know there really is no magic. Just the illusion thereof. When you watch a magic show, the magician’s job is to provide something completely amazing, filled with wonderment and joy. Not knowing how the trick or illusion is performed is all part of the fun of a magic show.

The way the magician achieves that is by doing a series of repeatable steps designed to create a specific outcome – the delight and amazement of the audience.

One business that “gets” customer service is Disney. They know how to instill magic into everything they do. But not the magic that you may be thinking of. A different sort of magic. They don’t have some magic pixie dust that they shower on cast members (that’s what Disney calls their employees). They just have a REPEATABLE, duplicatable system to perform their show.

It is practiced.

It is updated.

It is practiced again. And again and again.

Then it is performed. Whether it be at a restaurant at one of the resorts, an attraction at a park or the route the buses take – all the magic at Disney is created with repeatable, replicable, practiced systems.

How can your small business emulate the magic Disney creates every day?

IMPLEMENT WOW IN HOW YOU SERVE YOUR CUSTOMERS AND CLIENTS

The question Walt would ask is, “How can we create an experience out of the mundane?”

I had to learn this lesson in my coffee & smoothie business. After all, there’s nothing more mundane than a smoothie, right? By tranforming that mundane smoothie into a “vacation in a cup”, I was able to literally transform my business, taking it from $500K in debt to a 7-figure profitable business.

When you implement WOW you not only meet the expectations of your customers and clients, you exceed them, on a repeatable and consistent basis. Sure, there are many companies that may WOW their customers or clients occasionally. Maybe the occasional “above the call of duty” experience. Getting upgraded for free on a flight, extra whipped cream on a sundae, or an employee just did everything possible to make an unhappy client happier.

But to truly Disney-fy your business, you need to make exceeding your clients’ expectations your standard operating procedure. In order to consistently exceed your customers’ expectations, you must be dogmatic, strict, and unyielding in your pursuit.

• Analyze your customers’ experience (from their perspective, not yours)
• Understand their needs, wants, stereotypes and emotions
• Commit every part of your business (processes, infrastructure, design, and training) to creating a magical experience.

AN OBSESSION WITH DETAILS

Walt Disney was famous for his attention for every detail, and he dictated that everyone had the same attention that he did.

Every small business should be about the details. One small oversight of the smallest of details is the beginning of the end for you. You must be unwavering in your demand for adherence to every detail in your business.

One of the chief causes of failure today is the striving for unearned success. Doing just the bare minimum in providing service and then wondering why your customers never visit again or your clients never call you back.

I recently had an appliance repair company come to my house to fix a noise in the dryer. When they arrived, the technician was in a clean uniform (it was already 2 0’clock and he had been working), placed a mat on my porch to wipe his feet, placed a towel under his tool bag and used a special mat to slide out the dryer so he would not scratch the floor. Now mind you, the dryer is in my basement on a concrete floor and he still used the special mat. Deciding on the right “level” for each thing we do is important.

Walt once said: Even if I’m the only one that notices, some things are still worth doing, because I need to be prideful to be motivated. I’m paraphrasing, but I’m close. I have to be proud of what I do at least comfortable with it, regardless of others’ appreciation. And if I lived on others’ appreciation, my service would be nowhere as powerful as it is. Few clients can appreciate every nuance, my reasoning and the psychology behind the service I provide. Many take it for granted, hardly anybody faints from awe or gives my technicians a standing ovation.

CREATE A SERVICE THEME AND SERVICE STANDARDS FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Disney’s service theme is “To create happiness for people of all ages everywhere.”  Vaguely sounds like a Unique Selling Proposition, doesn’t it? This theme is the foundation and prerequisite for all undertakings at Disney. Every decision made by the cast and management is measured against it.

Service standards are then set to create the specific actions that are necessary to achieve the service theme. Disney has ONLY FOUR service standards. Here they are in order of importance: Safety, Courtesy, Show and Efficiency.

These are cut in stone.

They are immovable.

There is no questioning them.

They are the guiding principles for everything that happens at Disney.

Safety: Safety is built into everything they do. It’s the first consideration when they are designing rides and resorts, emergency services, environmental protection, prevention, training and policies & procedures.

Courtesy: Courtesy is taught from Day 1. The fundamentals include treating every guest as a VIP, knowing the answers to questions (or finding the answers), giving the personal touch, using friendly phrases and gestures and being aggressively friendly.

Show: Show is integrated into every element of setting and theme. This includes cast appearance, costumes, documentation, show quality reviews, standards manuals, and of course, cast members are performers as well as service providers.

Efficiency: Efficiency involves both the utilization of facilities and systems and the cast members who operate them. Points that are considered include: capacity of facility, guest flow patterns, sales, speed of service, space utilization and operational readiness.

Processes: In order to have over 75,000 employees providing a seamless, exciting and memorable experience to millions upon millions of people 365 days a year, you must have a systematic process to avoid the utter chaos that would ensue.

There are processes for every little thing that occurs at Disney. From putting air in bus tires, to the bus drivers’ greetings to guests, from how many lanes are needed at the entrance to the park to how the parking lots are filled up, there is a step-by-step, exacting procedure for each.

However, as with any good plan, process or system, there are clog or combustion points, and breakdowns can occur. And instead of creating a happy memory for a guest, that clog point can turn a good day into a bad one rapidly. One example is the “lost car” problem.

Imagine, if you will, that you have rented a car, which, by the way looks like just about all the other rental cars in Orlando, and you parked it in a veritable ocean of other cars early in the morning. Then, after 8, 10, 12 hours at the Magic Kingdom, you emerge only to forget where you had parked. Was it Goofy 5, Pluto 4, or Daisy 9? (Disney names and numbers its lots after their characters). The tram drivers also announce those locations as guests board the trams, but still, cars are lost.

Now, instead of leaving those sunburned, exhausted and weary tourists wandering willy-nilly through the acres of parking lots, the cast came up with a fix, of sorts. Since the parking lots are filled in a specific order, the tram drivers began keeping track of what lot and row they were in at the time the cars were parked in the morning. That list was then distributed to the next shift of parking attendants. So if the guest could remember an approximate time they arrived, they could narrow it down where the car was.

Pretty nice way to keep the happy memories intact, don’t you think? And how many companies out there do you imagine would even bother trying to address the customer’s parking problem? After all, it’s their fault for being so forgetful, right? But at Walt’s company, fixing a customer’s problem, whatever it may be, always matters.

Examining your own processes and choke points could reveal some serious client and guest pain points. If you walked Walt around your business, think about what he might point out to you.

Finally, and this really is the bottom line point: You are running a business. Disney, at the end of the day is a BUSINESS. And the whole point of running a business is to generate PROFIT. Disney just recently increased its park entry tickets by another 5%, and NO ONE is complaining. If they are, they are doing so quietly, as the theme parks are having record attendance. Also, Disney recently announced they have raised their stock dividends a whopping 34% after a year of record results.

If that’s not a reason to Disney-fy your business, I don’t know what is.

About Stacey Riska

Stacey Riska, aka “Small Business Stacey” is a serial entrepreneur who is passionate about saving small business and rebuilding Main Street. She helps small and local business owners become a #SmallBizMarketingWiz by teaching them marketing strategies that get MORE: MORE leads, MORE customers/clients, MORE sales, and MORE money. Stacey is the founder of Small Biz Marketing Specialist, THE go-to place for marketing tips, techniques and strategies that get results. Stacey is also the creator of the Daily Deals for Massive Profits Training Program, an online video training program that teaches small and local business owners how to use daily deal sites like Groupon to skyrocket their business growth and get massive profits. In this program she teaches from experience, as it was the key strategy that transformed her coffee and smoothie business from being $500K in debt to a 7-figure profitable business. When not saving the small business world, she enjoys sipping red wine, eating chocolate (who doesn’t!) and spending time with her amazing husband.