In Customer Service Consulting, Disney's Small World Is Growing

Could Disney’s expertise with customer service help bookstores stem their decline? According to this feature in The New York Times (@NYTimesAd), the Disney Institute (@DisneyInstitute) is the “low-profile consulting division of the Walt Disney Company.” Disney is undeniably an expert in customer relationship management.

For instance, the company has spent so much time studying its park customers — more than 120 million of them globally last year — that it places trash cans every 27 paces, the average distance a visitor carries a candy wrapper before discarding it.

When clients send their employees to Disney for training,...some time is spent in seminars on topics like “purpose before task.” They also get tours of the parks, where Disney managers demonstrate their tricks in action, like giving directions by pointing with two fingers instead of one (it’s more polite).

Disney-led workshops emphasize 5 principles: leadership, training, customer experience, brand loyalty, and creativity. Sessions are custom tailored.

Examples of Disney’s attention to detail with its clients:

Maryland teachers were instructed to engage children by crouching and speaking to them at eye level. Chevrolet dealers were taught to think in theater metaphors: onstage, where smiles greet potential buyers, and offstage, where sales representatives can take out-of-sight cigarette breaks.

A Florida children’s hospital was advised to welcome patients in an entertaining way, prompting it to employ a ukulele-playing greeter dressed in safari gear.

Read this in full.

Also see our previous blogpost, “A Growing Trend: Retailers Perfuming Stores.”

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