Achieving Disney-level Customer Service

Sonia Portwood (00:06): Hello, and welcome to this episode of Banking Out Loud. I'm your host for today's episode, Sonya Portwood. We have an exciting show for you today. Our topic is service excellence, something that we all strive for and take pride in as consumers. We've all had experiences that stood out. We were impressed and wanting to tell others about that experience. That's the power of excellent customer service, and it is a crucial to fair trade for businesses today. We're going to explore ways to elevate our service. Take it to the next level. We've invited a true expert in the field of service excellence. Dennis. No. With over 20 years of experience working with Disney, a company that's known for its exceptional customer experiences, Dennis has developed a deep understanding and passion for service excellence. He's even taught corporate philosophy and business practices to the leadership team at Disney University. Today, Dennis helps organizations achieve their goals related to customer service, employee development, and leadership. He's written several books on delivering excellence in customer service, including his newest book, lessons from The Mouse, A Guide for Applying Disney's World Secrets of Success to your organization, your Career, and Your Life. Dennis, we are thrilled to have you on today's show. Welcome. Dennis Snow (01:38): Thank you so much. Uh, I'm honored to have been invited to participate. Sonia Portwood (01:42): Yes. Well, we've had you visit PCBB at a sales meeting before, and you did such an excellent job for us, and we were just happy that you were available to talk to us today. Dennis Snow (01:52): I'm thrilled. Yeah. And I enjoyed working with your team. Sonia Portwood (01:55): Thank you. So, let's dive a bit into your background. Could you share with us maybe some of the different roles you've held during your 20 year career at Disney? What sparked your passions? Dennis Snow (02:07): Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, I had visited Disney World as a, as a child and thought it was the greatest place during a break in college. I was looking for something to do, and I thought, well, I'll go work at Disney World for three months, . And it turned into a 20 year career, which was a very common story. But my first job was actually working on the rides at, at Disney World. So I was a, I was a ride operator on the front lines. Uh, got into management in the early 1980s and managed different locations around Disney World. They have a division called the Disney University, which is the internal training arm of the company. And I was involved with that for several years and managed part of that division. Then we spun off a division that did training for other companies that wanted to benchmark best practices with Disney. So I started a division of that and managed that for, for several years. After 20 years at Disney, I started my own company where I help organizations with delivering a world class customer experience and speak at conferences and do training sessions and so forth. All around that whole idea of, of customer experience. That's, that's really my, my passion. So that's what I've been doing now for the last 24 years, and I love every minute of it. Sonia Portwood (03:29): That's great. You've been busy for sure. Dennis Snow (03:32): Yeah. Yeah. So Sonia Portwood (03:33): Tell me, when it comes to successful customer service and the strategy, what do you believe are the key principles? Dennis Snow (03:42): Well, there are four things that I really focus in on that I think are at the heart of a service-driven organization. Number one is to look at everything through the lens of the customer. We tend to look at things through our internal lens. So it's important to flip that lens around and look at the, the experience from the perspective of the customer. What are they going through? What are their challenges? What are their needs? What are their wants? So seeing the experience through their lens. Another principle that I focus in on is pay attention to the details. Because everything speaks, and that's a phrase that's really important. Everything speaks every detail from the appearance of a branch to the user friendliness of your website, to the, the tone of voice of somebody that I'm talking to on the telephone. Every detail is either enhancing your bank's brand or it's detracting from the brand. (04:37): So that's the concept I call. Everything speaks. Another thing that I focus in on is the importance of creating moments of wow. And I stress that moments of wow, because sometimes I think we, we focus on how can we create these big grandiose wow experiences, which are great when we can do them, when you can really do the big wows. But the magic, I think is in the, the little wows, you know, remembering customers thank you notes to them, you know, following up after they've had an issue. 'cause the point is, little wows add up. Think of the, the lifetime of a customer working with a bank. It doesn't have to be the big things, those little wows. And then the fourth one that I think is critical is knowing what frustrates customers and doing something about it. You know, I, I think that a lot of industries, a lot of companies, they, they know what frustrates their customers. They just don't do anything about it. When you're the organization that actually does something about those frustrations to at least alleviate them, you become a beacon of light in your industry. So when I look at what is at the heart of a service-driven organization, I find those four principles really rise to the top. That if you're doing those four things consistently, the likelihood is you're creating customer loyalty, which is what we're all looking for. Sonia Portwood (06:03): Yes. Yes. So, I know from my experience, those customers that are frustrated and do express that to you, Mm-Hmm. , I've always thought they were so valuable. Yeah. Because if they're not expressing that frustration to you, the likelihood is they're expressing it outside Oh, yeah. Of your institution. Yeah. And you don't know about it. So I think they're very valuable, and it's very important that we listen to those and make sure that we share that information throughout the organization. Oh, yeah. So that we can do something about it. Dennis Snow (06:40): And a really good way to do that is to engage your team members in those discussions, because they're the ones that deal with those customer frustrations all the time. Right. So, just asking the question of your team members, you know, what are you finding frustrates customers and, and companies that I work with, I always recommend they have a meeting once a quarter with nothing else on the agenda, other than what are we finding frustrates the people we serve? And, uh, if you come up with four solutions to at least alleviate frustrations every year, you know, that's world class. That's world class. And, and you're so right too about people will tell others, and now of course with social media, they can tell millions of people of about their frustrations. So it's a critical principle. Sonia Portwood (07:27): It is. And I wanted to touch also on, you talked about looking at everything from the customer's lens. Could you give us some examples of how someone might look at a process they have and do just that? Dennis Snow (07:43): Yeah. So for example, let's use a young couple buying their first home. As a banker, you might deal with those sorts of things all the time. You deal with those processes all the time. You know, the language, you know, the acronyms. And sometimes we fall into processing people because we're so comfortable with the process versus looking through the lens of that couple that might be buying their first home or buying a car. And there's, there's excitement about it. There's some nervousness about it. You know, there's a pride factor involved. And so reflecting that back that you understand and congratulating them using everyday language, you know, not overwhelming them with the terminology that sometimes we fall into that makes people even more nervous. It's just really understanding, okay, what's the customer going through? One of the things at Disney, sometimes people ask questions that seem like bizarre questions. (08:42): You know, what time is the three o'clock parade? is kind of a famous question that Disney cast members get, but when you look at it from their lens, what they're really asking is, what time does the three parade get here? Where, where I'm standing right now. So if you look at it through their lens, it's really a very legitimate question. And so we would train people on, on that. You know, I started out wearing this Captain Nemo costume. It was a submarine ride called 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. So I would be wearing this little sailor suit, you know, this Captain Nemo costume. And guests would come up, you know, and they'd ask, do you work here ? You know, I'm like, I'm a grown man, you know, I'm in, I'm in this costume. But what they're really asking through their lens is, can you help me? Can you help? Sonia Portwood (09:31): Exactly. Yes. Yes. Dennis Snow (09:33): That's the idea of looking through the lens of the customer, is turning it around and making sure we're seeing the experience and demonstrating that understanding through the way we interact with the customer. Sonia Portwood (09:47): Right, right. Exactly. So tell me, out of all of these principles that you mentioned, mm-hmm, , which one tends to be the most challenging for organizations to achieve? Dennis Snow (09:57): Yeah, that's a good question. You know, they're all challenging, but I would say the, the one that's probably most challenging is looking at everything through the lens of the customer. Because we tend to, especially over time, try to figure out how do we make things easier for ourselves. You know, we, we tend to look at our processes through our own lens and not through the customer's lens. So one of the things that I'm a big believer in is journey mapping. I call it service mapping. You know, other people call it journey mapping, but looking at key processes such as opening an account, such as taking out a loan, whatever process it may be. And as a team map that process out step by step. But from the customer's perspective, anytime you're mapping a process out and you say, well, now we do this, you have to stop and say, well, we're doing that. (10:57): What's the customer doing? Mm-Hmm. . So it's getting your team thinking about these key processes from the customer's perspective. And then once you have that and say, okay, this is how it flows from the customer's perspective, then how do we make each step excellent? What can we do to make each step from the customer's perspective an excellent experience? And that really then takes it from, this is an idea to this is a way to perform. This is a way to do what we do. And those become wonderful training tools, accountability tools, et cetera. So I would say the biggest challenge is, is looking through the lens of the customer. And the way to overcome that challenge is to map those key processes out from the customer's perspective. And then how do we deliver each step at excellence? Sonia Portwood (11:48): Right. I remember after you came and spoke to us, we did an exercise on our website where we at, where customers were coming and making it some form of a request. Mm-Hmm. . And we went through the process based on your recommendation, looking at it through the customer's eyes, and realized there were a couple of steps, especially at the end where you might leave the customer thinking, well, what next? Dennis Snow (12:12): Yeah. Yeah. That's a great example. Sonia Portwood (12:14): Right? What next? You don't wanna leave the customer not knowing what is coming next. Right. Setting their expectation so they feel comfortable and not in a state of, do I need to do something else? Will I hear from them? Do I need to follow up? Dennis Snow (12:31): Right. What I find is when we do this mapping exercise is we'll find that, you know, whatever organization I'm working with, that some of the steps, they're really doing very well. Mm-Hmm. . But this makes you look at every step. And so, like you said, by going through the exercise, you found a gap. And that's the point. You know, an example of of not seeing through the lens of the customer that I think that most people can relate to is, you know, you buy furniture and you have to have it delivered to your house. And they always, you know, give you a four hour window, you know, be there between 11 and and and three or, or 12 and four mm-Hmm. . And that's not convenient for you as the customer. That's for their own convenience. They're looking at the process through their own eyes. And so turning that lens around as a real differentiator, it really helps you to differentiate yourself from all of the other options that that customers have out there for financial services. Sonia Portwood (13:30): Right. Well, I wanna talk a little bit about responsibility. Mm-Hmm. within the organization. And we know it's important for the frontline staff, it's critical for their role. Right. But who else is responsible for this? And could you share some examples Sure. Of how different people within the organization can contribute to creating a great customer experience? Dennis Snow (13:54): Sure. Yeah. As you said, you know, we tend to think of the frontline folks, but it's, the obvious answer is everybody, everybody has a customer. If you weren't serving somebody, your job wouldn't exist. So everybody has a, a customer. So it may be the external customer, but it also may be somebody else within the bank. You know, many people within the bank, their customers are other employees within the bank. The same principles apply of looking through the lens of the customer. Everything speaks, creating the moments of wow, doing something about the frustrations. The same principles apply from a management perspective. A couple of different things is, number one, your employees. One of your roles is setting them up for success. So in effect, they're your customer. In, in doing that and seeing things through their lens and so forth. Modeling the values of the organization, modeling customer service. Much of my time when I was with the Disney University, the internal training arm, my guests, you know, they call their customers their guests. My guests were other cast members. And how I treated them would impact how they would treat their guests along the way. Sonia Portwood (15:12): Absolutely. Mm-Hmm. . Dennis Snow (15:13): So one of the things that I always say is never let anybody say, I don't serve the guests. You know, I don't take care of the customers. I don't have a customer. Everybody has a customer. It just may be somebody else within the organization. Sonia Portwood (15:28): Right. Now, I know you have a story about housekeeping at Disney. Would you mind sharing that with our guests, ? Dennis Snow (15:35): Yeah. Yeah. Well, the principle there that I would say is engage your people in how do we get better? Our people are, they are a gold mine of information and how we can get better at what we do. And so in one of those service mapping meetings that I talked about earlier, there was a housekeeper there, and she mentioned that one of the things that she does with the stuffed Disney characters when she would be doing the nighttime turndown service in hotel rooms, is if she found some of the stuffed Disney characters in the rooms, you know, that the kids had left there while they're in the park or at dinner, is she would tuck them into the children's beds, you know, put them right up on the pillow and tuck them in and leave a little note saying, I know you had a busy day. (16:23): The characters told me they were tired, so I tucked them in for you. You know, so you have to picture the impact on these guests coming back to the room. Well, she shared this in, in one of their team meetings, and it became kind of legendary. And housekeepers were talking about it, managers were talking about it, housekeepers now, you know, they might position the characters with playing cards in their hand or sitting around milking cookies on the table, or they would line them up in front of the television set in the room and turn it on. But a couple of key points there is that, first of all, it started with an idea. Like I said, our people have these wonderful ideas that often go neglected. We just, we don't even know they're happening. But how do you leverage ideas like that? And that's where having these discussions with our teams and sharing best practices come about is you can mine some of those really fabulous behaviors and ideas, and then build them into the process, you know, build them into the training and so forth. So that's sort of a classic Disney example of the power of a very simple idea by a frontline cast member or employee. Sonia Portwood (17:37): I love that story. Dennis Snow (17:38): Yeah. Yeah. It's one of my favorites too. Sonia Portwood (17:42): So let's talk a little bit about maybe something that was implemented at Disney that didn't quite go the way you expected was not successful. Sure. And how were you able to identify it? Dennis Snow (17:54): Well, and, and that comes with every organization, not everything works. Many years ago they came up with an idea called the Disney Institute. The initial idea for the Disney Institute was to have an offering for a guest around personal enrichment, whether it be photography classes, gardening classes, animation, cooking. They created this campus called the Disney Institute. And it seemed like a great addition to the Disney offering, but it didn't really work because that's not why guests were coming to Disney World. They were coming down for the entertainment, they were coming for the attractions. So what they decided to do, which really worked out well, was transform the Disney Institute into those business programs that I talked about earlier. And we could incorporate some of those personal enrichment programs into our business programming. And so it started this transition from personal enrichment to, okay, let's it, which didn't work, let's incorporate that into our business programs, which were already very successful, and now we have a campus to do it on. And then ultimately, it really became just about business programs. Companies really wanted to benchmark best practices at Disney. So the original concept didn't really work, but rather than just walk away from it, you know, how can we transition it? What can we do to take that initial idea and make it work? Sonia Portwood (19:32): Yeah. So it's important when you implement any change that you monitor it for success. Dennis Snow (19:37): Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it became apparent fairly early on that, that it was just a miscalculation. And we all, every, I don't care how good your company is, , you know, at some point you're going to make a mistake. And so the first thing is, okay, what do we, what can we do to salvage it? You know? Is there a way to repackage this or to, to make adjustments to it before you just abandon it? Sonia Portwood (19:59): Yeah. Yeah. Dennis Snow (20:00): I remember another example. When we first opened, uh, Epcot, we developed these passports where people could go between the Magic Kingdom and Epcot. And before that it was tickets. Well, these passports you had to wear around your neck on a string , but then, you know, it would rain and they would get wrinkled and the, the ink from the stamps would run. And it just got to be really a bad idea. And so we just had to change it back to a ticket that people could just carry in their pockets. But it was one of those ideas that seemed like a good idea, but when we actually executed, really was not a very good idea. And again, okay, so what could we do to solve the problem? Right. Sonia Portwood (20:42): Right. So when you're talking about solving problems, tell us on your experience, what are the most common organization mistakes? Okay, yeah. When trying to achieve that. Yeah. Disney level customer service. Dennis Snow (20:55): Well, a couple have already mentioned. One is not clearly defining the, the customer experience. One of the things that I think is important is what is the customer experience in our bank supposed to be? I'm a big believer in, in discussing this as a team, what do we want our customers to say about their experience? You know, what are three or four things we would want our customers to say about their experience? That they obviously valued my business. They really cared about my financial future. They had my best interests at heart. They weren't just trying to sell financial products. What is it you would want a customer to say about their experience at the bank? And then, okay, then what has to happen in order for them to say those things? So a lot of companies, a lot of organizations, they haven't taken the time to define, okay, what do we want the customer experience to be? (21:48): That's really a starting point. I mentioned earlier, developing your processes for your own convenience, not the customer's convenience. I see that one as a mistake all the time. Hiring the wrong people. You know, once you've identified what you want the experience to be, we need to make sure we're hiring people that are wired to deliver that experience. So taking the time to identify what are the competencies of our strongest performers so that we can make sure that we're hiring people that are likely to perform at a, at a high level. Another mistake that I often see is that they don't really embed service excellence into their training processes. You know, their training processes are all about technical things, the technical side of the business. Right. And to make sure that you embed the service excellence behaviors into the training. And, and that training isn't just new hire onboarding. (22:48): It's any training that you do on a new piece of equipment, uh, transfer to another job within the bank that those service values are embedded. You know, people used to ask me all the time, how long is the training at Disney? And I had to say, well, it's from the time you join the company to the time you leave, because you're surrounded by these messages. You know, these service messages all the time. So I think that's neglected oftentimes. And then another mistake that I see is that a lot of companies tolerate intolerable service. They let unacceptable service go. And I always say, never let the coaching moment go that coaching is real time training. You know, if there's a service gap, you hear about something, you overhear something, you see something that really shouldn't have happened. That's a coaching moment. And that's as good as training gets because something happened and you, you address it. And the same thing with recognition that reinforces those service principles. When you see or hear somebody giving great service just to take the time to say, Hey, I heard about how you handled that, to acknowledge their performance, that's training as well. So a lot Sonia Portwood (24:05): Of positive reinforcement. Yeah. Dennis Snow (24:07): Yeah. The reinforcement. So, you know, a lot of companies, they just tolerate poor performance and then that just perpetuates itself. And we lose credibility as leaders when we do that. So I would say those are some of the top mistakes that I see in organizations is that they haven't identified what the experience is supposed to be. They design their processes from an internal perspective rather than a customer perspective. They don't focus on the hiring processes or rehiring the right people. They don't focus on training relentlessly, and they allow poor performance to go unnoticed. Sonia Portwood (24:47): Yeah. These are all great examples and so important. Yeah. And I would imagine there are some of our listeners here today that are thinking, I love this. These are all great ideas. Yeah. But this is bigger than me. Yeah. What can I do to go back to communicate this to my boss, right? So that they can communicate it to their boss, , and we can implement a customer service strategy. Dennis Snow (25:14): Well hire me . Sonia Portwood (25:17): Of course. Of course. Dennis Snow (25:18): . Well, there's two things I would say to that. One is to have these conversations with your boss. You know, what we are really selling as an experience. You know, we happen to do it through financial products, but you know, and I know that people have a lot of choices for financial products. So what we have to do is create the experience. And here's some things that I heard on this podcast that help create that great experience. Here's some things about that. And to present these things to your boss, you know, that these are things that we should embrace, but at the same time, we all have a sphere of influence. There are always things that we can do with our direct reports that can raise the bar of service, but then your boss, other parts of the bank see that happening. Become curious as to how did you do that? How did you make that happen? And that's another way of perpetuating all of this is within your own sphere of influence. What can I do to at least engage my people in delivering that outstanding experience and then perpetuating it that way. And really the ideal is to do both within your sphere of influence, but also to talk to your boss about these things. And once you get the higher ups engaged in this, then it really takes off through the whole organization. Sonia Portwood (26:39): Right. Do you find when you have customer service excellence program that the employees are happy Dennis Snow (26:48): ? Well, it depends. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on their experience. You know, sometimes people roll their eyes, oh, here we go. Yeah, here we go. They went to a seminar and now they've come back with this new stuff and the Sonia Portwood (27:03): Flavor of the week. Dennis Snow (27:04): Right. The flavor of the, of the week. And when you're not around, you know, they're just talking to each other. Just wait it out. You know, it'll go away. And so it really depends. All joking aside, what that says to me is we have to be relentless. If we decide to go down this path, we can't let those barriers stop us. We have to acknowledge the likelihood is there're going to be some skepticism because probably our people have lived through some flavor of the month programs in their history. And so we have to be relentless and say, no, this isn't going to go away. This is part of what we're going to do, and we're not going to abandon it when it feels like it's not working. Because at some point it will feel like it's not working. Mm-Hmm. , we just have to recognize, oh, it takes time for our people to see this is really what we're doing. We're going down this path. The Disney theme parks open to 1955, and they've been relentlessly pursuing this service excellence philosophy since that time. They've never rested on their laurels and say, okay, you know, we can, you know, let that go. We don't need to focus on that. No, they focus on that every single day since 1955. So that's the key is, you know, the word that I like to use is relentless. We, we just can't let it go. Sonia Portwood (28:24): Right. I remember my first job outta college. I was working for our savings and loan and I was in sales and they were wanting us to cross sell a product and we weren't real comfortable doing it. Mm-Hmm. . And so, actually, you know, we may mention it every once in a while. Well, finally the manager came up and put a sign in front of each one of our face where the customer couldn't see it. And it said, cross sell such and such, Uhhuh , I want you to do it to every single customer that comes here. And it was uncomfortable at first. Yeah. But then once you did it 2, 3, 4 times, then it became easier and you got more comfortable. Right. You were using your own language and it wasn't a struggle. Dennis Snow (29:06): Yeah. Yeah. That's a fabulous example of putting a basic sign in front of you to remind you about this. I love things like that. That's a, a great way of saying, no, this is what we are doing. One of the things for us at Disney, when you join the company, they say, one of your jobs is to pick up trash off the ground. Mm-Hmm. . Which feels weird at first, but everybody was doing it. It was expected of you, you know, it was non-negotiable. And it just got to the point where you could pick up a piece of trash off the ground without even thinking of it. You go to other places and you start doing it, you know, it feeds on itself because it's built into the culture of the organization. Sonia Portwood (29:47): Exactly. Yeah. Yes, yes. Well, Dennis, what do our listeners need to hear today? To sum this up? Dennis Snow (29:54): I would say, if I were to, to, to sum it up, is it comes down to personal commitment. As a leader in the organization, you set the tone for all of this. Your people are watching you, they're listening to you. How you talk about other functions within the bank, how you talk about other employees, how you talk about customers. They are taking their cue from you. So think about it in those terms that your words, your behaviors are the model that your employees are taking their cue from you. And so the more you can embrace these things through your words, through your behaviors, the more likely they're going to become part of the of the culture. One of my favorite Disney photographs, it was probably from 1959, it's a picture of Walt Disney in Disneyland that somebody snapped of him picking up trash off the ground in Disneyland. And it's just such a powerful message to me to, to see this photo of Walt doing what he expected everybody to be doing. You know, that keep the park clean. And so that's the message. People are taking their cue from you as a leader. Sonia Portwood (31:12): Walking the talk. Dennis Snow (31:13): Yeah. Walking the talk. Exactly. Sonia Portwood (31:16): Dennis, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you today. Thank you so much for sharing your insights and expertise. Dennis Snow (31:23): I've enjoyed it. This has flown by for me. I hope it asks for everybody, but it's definitely flown by for me. Sonia Portwood (31:29): For me too. Well, I think most people can hear Disney stories all day long, since it is certainly is one of my favorite places to visit Dennis Snow (31:37): My, my retirement. Thanks you for that. Sonia Portwood (31:39): Yeah. . Well, for our listeners who are looking to enhance their institution's customer service, I highly recommend reaching out to Dennis. His contact details will be available in the episode description, or you can visit his website@snowassociates.com. Again, thank you, Dennis, for joining us today. Dennis Snow (32:01): My pleasure. Sonia Portwood (32:02): And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in. If you haven't already, be sure to check out our previous episodes and subscribe so you can be the first to know when a new episode drops. We're always open to suggestions for future topics where if you're interested in being a guest on our podcast, please email us at banking out loud@pbb.com. Until next time, take care.