What can Disneyland teach IT teams about Customer Service?
Customer Service and magical experiences
When I was thinking about a title for a blog about customer service Disneyland kept springing to mind. Purely from personal experience over the years with my daughters and grandsons. For many, Disneyland consistently conjures up magical experiences where the customer is the focus attention.
This is even more evident in an age of contrasting levels of customer service. Organisations choosing to give new customers preferential treatment while (apparently) penalising existing customers for their loyalty are at the opposite end of the scale. I was talking to a colleague about vehicle insurance a few days ago. He said he was having to change providers every year to maintain a low premium. This ‘easy come, easy go’ attitude to customers does not (in my opinion and experience) create an environment where even reasonable customer service can exist.
Having said this, organisations providing poor customer service do make us appreciate even more, the organisations or individuals providing excellent customer service. Had this not been the case in 1984, Astro may never have been conceived.
“The sum total of zero attention to detail, zero due diligence and zero customer care.”
When Rob and I formed Astro in 1984 we were both working for Cable & Wireless UK Services. One of our main drivers was the poor customer service we were receiving from our contractors. As Area Manager I was having to deploy engineers from my already stretched field service team to ‘mop up’ problems created by our contractors. This was particularly challenging on a Monday morning after weekend projects. Our customers were complaining to us, we were having to field engineers to fix the problems while our service customers were left waiting for an engineer.
The problems we were left with ranged from equipment in the wrong location, different colour codes used at opposite ends of the same cable, equipment connected in such a way that power supplies were blown, the list went on. The sum total of zero attention to detail, zero standards and zero customer care. What made things worse was there was no sign of any contractors on site after the work was ‘completed’ to even help to resolve any of the issues.
We founded Astro on the basis of working to standards, providing a one year guarantee on any project undertaken and we would always, without exception, have someone on site during the first hours of operation following any adds, moves or changes. As a result, we rapidly gained a reputation for excellent customer service as a result of delivering successful project after successful project. At the time that was the only marketing we needed. Rob and I really care about our customers, and even back then many of our customers were also our friends. We never believed the old adage ‘no friends in business’ and we worked just about every hour available to us to ensure our customer needs were met. That is why our business stood the test of time.
“One of the best elements of my job is to receive positive feedback from customers when one of my team has delivered an excellent customer experience.”
One of the best elements of my job is to receive positive feedback from customers when one of my team has delivered an excellent customer experience. In fact, I have always welcomed all forms of feedback as we do not always get it right and without honest feedback we would miss out on opportunities to improve.
While on this subject I have been fortunate enough to experience excellent customer service from a number of organisations over the past year. So I thought it would be a good opportunity to recognise the two that have really stood out for me for their customer service excellence and I will explore what IT teams can learn from these examples. But, before I do that I just want to return to Disneyland for while.
The customer service in Disneyland always amazes me. Whatever your thoughts about Disney, you cannot fault their absolute attention to detail and the effort and enthusiasm they inject into delivering and maintaining an excellent customer experience.
“…whether it is a minor upgrade or a major refresh our customers deserve our absolute attention to detail. “
Their absolute attention to detail is evident when you (try) to look behind the scenes of their attractions. Quite simply, they maintain the dream. By comparison if you look around the side or back of the majority of the attractions and rides in the average theme park you will see all the poorly painted, rusting, corrugated steel panels, support timbers and even paint pots and maintenance equipment left over from construction and repairs. But not in Disneyland. The dream is maintained even if you wander off course around the back of an attraction.
IT teams can learn a great deal from Disney. Whatever project we are delivering whether it is a minor upgrade or a major refresh our customers deserve our absolute attention to detail. This attention to detail will go a long way to ensuring our customer’s project is a success and the risk to their business is minimised.
We can take a leaf out of their customer service book too. Disney establish an excellent customer experience from the moment you walk on park and and maintain that excellent customer experience to the time you leave the park. Effective communication is a major ingredient in Disney’s success as everyone on the team knows what is required of them and they all stay in role while on park.
“Take a leaf out of Disneyland’s book and stay in role for the duration of the project.”
Many IT teams are guilty of not communicating effectively and not having an appropriate level of empathy with the user community. IT teams can improve the relationship with their user community significantly by treating them as customers. After all, that is exactly what they are. I know this will come as a shock to some IT practitioners as their natural preference is to get stuck into the technical detail (bearing in mind I am technical myself) and may not communicate clearly enough the implications of their planned actions.
On the subject of ‘staying in role’, many a large IT project has fallen apart because members of the IT project team either don’t really know what their role is or they get involved in other team member’s tasks while neglecting their own. Why do it? It is a recipe for disaster and a project manager’s nightmare. Take a leaf out of Disneyland’s book and stay in role for the duration of the project.
“I have seen many articles in magazines and on the internet saying you can only measure the effectiveness of good customer through the remedial process when things go wrong.”
Throughout our history we empowered our teams to do whatever they felt appropriate to deliver good customer service. If that meant they had to work around our customers with small windows of access opportunity or work during times that are least disruptive to their operation we allowed that to be negotiated locally. This obviously required some give and take otherwise costs would rise and it would not be viable for our customers or us. By setting expectations at the outset and communicating our intentions clearly we were able to maintain a good working relationship throughout the project to the point where some of our customers were genuinely pleased to see us when we visited site.
Even with the best planning and resources available it is inevitable that things can still go wrong. I have seen many articles in magazines and on the internet saying you can only measure the effectiveness of good customer through the remedial process when things go wrong. I believe there is some value in this but only as part of the overall customer service process. Disney do not wait for things to go wrong before demonstrating their best customer service skills. Customer service is ingrained in everything they do. Customer service needs to be ingrained in everything we do in IT too.
I will now share my top two personal customer service experiences over the past year that really stand out for me. These are a little closer to home than Disneyland but in my opinion they were great examples of excellent customer service.