Be Our Guest

When you think of Disney what comes to your mind? Mickey? Princesses? Movies? Theme Parks? How about their incredible guest services? Their theme parks are known worldwide as being one of the friendliest places on Earth.

How does that happen? Can it be duplicated? If you are involved in guest services in any way, I highly recommend reading Be Our Guest by The Disney Institute and Theodore Kinni.

In this book, they share some of the essentials to providing excellent guest services. It’s a quick read that if is full of ideas which can be implemented almost anywhere. I’d like to share just a few points from the book.

Disney defines quality service as exceeding your guests’ expectations by paying attention to every detail of the delivery of your products and services. Disney identified a Quality Service Compass as a means of ensuring that expectations are exceeded. Here are the four points of their compass…

1. Guestology: Disney calls this the art and science of knowing and understanding customers.
2. Quality Standards: This serves two purposes – establish the criteria for actions that are necessary to accomplish the service strategy, and they serve as measures of Quality Service.
3. Delivery Systems: Disney has three delivery systems – their employees, their setting and their processes.
4. Integration: These three delivery systems are combined and aligned to create a complete operating system.

Here’s the nuts and bolts.

* If you want to have great guest services, you have to know who your guests are. Who are you targeting? What do they like? What will impact them?
* If you want to have great guest services, you have to deliver great services. You have to define what great service looks like and how you are going to determine if it’s being accomplished.
* If you want to have great guest services, you must have excellence in the people, the places, and the means in which you interact with your guests. You have to have excellent employees/volunteers. You have to have an excellent setting. You have to have an excellent means of delivering and tracking those services.
* If you want to have great guest services, you must make all that you do flow smoothly and easily as to streamline the experience for your guests. Do you have redundancy in what you do? Do you value your guests’ time?

Again if you are involved in guest services in anyway, this is a great little read that can give you some ideas as to how to improve your guests’ experience.

I hope you found this helpful and I encourage you to buy the book.

What has helped you to serve your guests better?