The Disney Institute keeps a low profile (not everyone can make the imaginative leap from mouse ears to skilled advice on best business practices), but nevertheless it has helped clients ranging from a single hair salon in Michigan and a youth counseling center in Boston to hospital chains, car dealerships, Häagen-Dazs International, United Airlines, and the NBA. Caught between a sluggish economy and multiple social media sites where consumers can express dissatisfaction, many companies are urgently seeking ways to please their customers. 

Sometimes the stakes for the Disney Institute’s clients are especially high. Hospitals, for instance, must earn high scores on patient satisfaction surveys to qualify for Medicare reimbursements. One Florida hospital went from the bottom 10 percent in the country on patient satisfaction to the top 10 percent after consulting with the institute’s experts.

The core of the institute’s customized program focuses on five principles: leadership, training, customer experience, brand loyalty, and creativity. Some of the customer service lessons Disney’s clients can hope to learn are the importance of surprising customers in small ways, creating and delivering on a brand promise (Disney’s is “Entertainment with heart”), and learning to say yes to customers whenever possible. Perhaps the lesson Disney itself best exemplifies is the need for employees to become the face of the brand, interacting with customers as much as possible, offering help instead of waiting to be asked, and becoming thoroughly knowledgeable about the product. The corollary lesson? Companies should keep employees happy to ensure they can focus on the positive in their customer interactions, instead of falling back on rote behavior and just taking the customer’s money.

Questions

1. The Disney Institute says clients can’t “take Disney and just plug it in.” In what ways can companies best adapt Disney’s advice to their own customer service situations?

2. Do you agree that keeping employees happy is important for sustaining a customer satisfaction orientation? Why or why not?