Anybody who has visited a Disney theme park in America usually makes three comments about the experience.
1. How friendly the Disney staff are.
2. How clean all areas of the park are.
3. How well organised everything is.
But is it really a magic potion that the Disney organisation have? My answer is no because most of what they do to create this "magic effect" can be copied by almost every business in this country, often with little or no extra cost.
Friendly Staff. It all starts with management's attitude to customers, Disney view their customers as 'guests' and invest in training staff to make sure the focus of everybody in the organisation is to satisfy customers. You could do this in your own company, perhaps the starting point should be reception where a "first impression" is made. The next step is to review your systems to make sure that they help your customers to do business with you. For example I recently met a company who had a system for processing orders to ensure fast dispatch of the product. However if a customer then telephoned again to add something extra to the order it was treated as a completely new order. This resulted in customers receiving lots of packages with accompanying delivery costs. Customers were not happy, even though the system was efficient. It needed flexibility to customer requests and needs.
Keep it Clean. Surely it does not require a "magic" ingredient for businesses to keep their premises, products and staff clean. Start by looking at your cars and vans.
Great Organisation. There is no question that the whole Disney empire is very well organised, very efficient and extremely successful at taking money off customers. The real trick is that they do this but still have their "guests" smiling. One of the reasons some organisations now decide to buy from smaller companies is because they believe them to be more responsive, efficient and friendly. Achieving this is very difficult for some smaller companies but the rewards can be extremely lucrative. If you are a small/medium sized company, deliver what you promise and meet customer expectations.
For example when I was in a restaurant within a Disney park a lady carrying a fully loaded tray was knocked by another customer waiting to order. Food and drink went all over the floor and the opportunity for a real argument was there. However what happened in the next 90 seconds summarised why Disney are so effective and how they create this image of "magic".
This is what happened. A supervisor took the lady, who's food was all over the floor, to one side and reordered her food. At the same time a cleaner appeared and cleared away the mess. In under 2 minutes the incident was over and the tills kept ringing!
The lesson for many businesses in the UK is to think hard about how they deal with complaints. Often companies will agonise about giving a discount or replacement to a customer. Perhaps the Disney reaction is more likely to generate a satisfied customer, great world-wide publicity (after all I'm telling you the story) and reduces wasting time that could be more productive.
The "Disney magic" is based on having well trained staff who clearly know what they must do to keep customers happy, a great product under constant development and change to keep it fresh, a pride in the company its products and premises supported by systems designed to keep everybody happy (staff and customers). Simple when you know how!
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