Our guests rarely notice when things go right, but they always notice when things go wrong. It’s how you deal with the problem that separates you from your competition.
We’ve spent years perfecting the same business principles on which Walt Disney founded his company – leadership, quality service, management, loyalty and creativity. These cornerstones have allowed our business to flourish and conquer new industries as we continually strive to create unparalleled entertainment experiences for our guests.
Here are a few tips for small businesses looking to improve the way they approach customer service.
Understand the difference between customer needs and customer wants
When you deliver on customer needs, the most you can hope for is meeting customer expectations. Understanding and delivering what the customer wants leads to exceeding customer expectations. Exceeding customer expectations drives intent to return and intent to recommend.
One Indiana small-business owner we work with – Donna Flanagin – noticed a problem with her clients’ frustrations and distractions when bringing their children into her store.
To deal with the issue, Flanagin bought colouring sheets to keep children occupied while in the store. When the child’s birthday arrives, Flanagin sends the colouring sheet and a birthday card to the child. It costs virtually nothing, yet reminds the parents about her business and helps foster brand loyalty with her customers.
Seek out contact with your customers
One of our quality service guidelines is to seek out guest contact. Cast members take the initiative to approach a family that appears confused and offer assistance.
Small businesses can train employees to be proactive in assisting customers. Instead of an employee waiting to be asked a question, he or she should volunteer to help. Employees should search for opportunities to interact with customers. Our cast members’ name tags feature each their first name and hometown to help initiate casual conversation.
Allow employees to be flexible
Employees should be trained and then trusted to personalize customer service. Most employees want to help, and if they are empowered to do the right thing for a customer, they will.
Make certain employees understand that their actions are integral to your company’s success. Our leaders spend time in the field looking for cast members who are doing things right. We then share these stories with others, so that the good behaviours get repeated, recognized and rewarded.
Just as important, make sure employees know they won’t be blamed if things do go wrong. See every experience as a learning opportunity – even bad experiences. If an employee makes a poor decision, learn from it and do your best to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Consistently communicate your company culture
When our cast members understand their role in sustaining the Disney heritage, they become emotionally aligned with the company’s success.
They are ambassadors – communicating, affirming and strengthening the organization’s values with every goal they reach. This type of success starts with leaders’ abilities to communicate their visions.
We are very clear with potential employees about everything that is expected of them, and we have high expectations from the minute they apply for a job. We then reinforce these expectations in our renowned Traditions orientation program and again in our on-the-job-training process.
Finally, area leaders and experienced cast members provide daily reinforcement of the culture of commitment rather than compliance.
Small-business owners can easily use the concepts we use at Disney because most of them cost little to no money to implement. It’s really about the culture and making sure employees understand the purpose behind it. We’ve observed that employees really understand the concept of treating others as though they are guests in their own home, where one would first listen to others rather than simply supplying information.