“Always remember, the magic begins with you.”
I plowed through another book after dropping The Wisdom of Walt halfway… It’s another Disney title, but very much more focused on the “behind the scenes” of what makes Disney tick, and it’s published by the Disney Institute, and full of practical magic. It’s called Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service, by the Disney Institute, with Theodore Kinni, 2011.
TLDR: It’s pretty good, and a quick read. Might be worth it, especially if you want to learn more about the high-level process behind what makes visiting a Disney park so amazing.
When I publish a book, I swear I will include and easy to reference for how to cite my book… no more deciphering from ISBN numbers, publisher’s hometown, APA or MLA, etc. I’ll make it easy for ya!
Disney’s Approach to Quality Service
People remember how you “make them feel.”
It’s easy. All it takes is a process, and a non-wavering commitment from all to see it through.
“You build the best product you can. You give people effective training to support the delivery of exceptional service. You learn from you experiences. And you celebrate success. You never stop growing. You never stop believing.” (p. xv)
Disney speak, where cast = employees, guest = customer, and so on. At Disney, it’s a show, and customer service becomes a well-rehearsed performance.
What is your mental model for the folks you work with, lead, and serve? Do you think in terms of customer, value, flow, employee? Or something else? I often refer to our students at Streetsboro as “our future astronauts” and have named all of our conference rooms for their predecessors like Alan Shepard, Yuri Gagarin, Sally Ride, and Valentina Tereshkova.
Brand loyalty, and messaging, are after all, key to a wholistic approach to making customer service the magic that it is. Be it Mickey, or Yuri.
No organization can do well without a customer-friendly employees. The tricky thing is – do you consider yourself a customer facing organization? Oftentimes, in K-12 education, we don’t like to talk about ‘product’ and ‘customer’. Cliche, and too easy, perhaps?
But you know what? What is the student to the teacher, if not a client of good learning? Our product is simple – a well rounded young person ready for life. Our customers are almost everyone – the students, the parents, the community, each other, society’s, and so on. Customer service, then, becomes key to success.
“Customer satisfaction is a moving target.” (p. 9)
What is the value of the experience you provide? Who benefits, and who needs to know what you do? How can we make school (just like a visit to Mickey’s park) part of the “everyday family conversation” (p. 11) for a long time?
Quality Service, according to Disney, mean exceeding your customer’s expectations. How? By paying attention to what they want.
How often do we actually meet with stakeholders in education, and listed to what they want? How involved is a community in the education of our young, truly? Sure, plenty of parents would say “they’re involved” but we take our marching orders from the state, who gets their data requirements from the federal government. Makes it hard to pay attention to what folks really want… and with a moving target, even that much harder to hit!
“When the experience is consistent, seamless, and of high quality” (p. 17) people come back to you for more… Do we think about that in K-12? What will happen now that competitors like private schools, STEM schools, and online are making attractive offers in lieu of attending public, especially in the wake of COVID?
Disney uses a Quality Service Compass to help them think about how to deliver service that is above and beyond. The four cardinal points are Guestology, Quality Standards, Delivery Systems, and Integration. Guestology is Disney’s solution to listening to the voice of the customer.
More in the next installment…