Once I started doing that, I found that people really responded to the whole idea of customer service, or what Disney would call guest service, and were indeed looking for ways that they could take the principles and apply them to other industries - and the principles do apply in just about every industry.

The differentiator is this: when you go into any business, whether a store or a restaurant, you can tell when people are focused on doing the tasks. They can do the task very effectively and very efficiently, but the problem is when you do things with a task approach, the customer feels processed. It might not be a bad experience, but it's hard to feel that loyalty when you feel like you've been processed as opposed to when you go into a company where they're still getting the task done, yet you can tell they care about the quality of your experience because of the eye contact, the tone of voice that people use, and the sense of care that they deliver. Now as the customer, we feel valued.

I think that wherever the customer falls on that continuum of feeling processed and feeling valued determines their loyalty. An extraordinary customer service experience, then, comes from people in the organization caring about the quality of the experience and demonstrating that through the way they deliver what they deliver.

Get the ideas of the employees especially in identifying customers frustrations, because, again, they are the ones that deal with customer frustrations all the time. Next, it’s important to put mechanisms in place to help alleviate those frustrations, and throughout the whole process, build tools that set employees up to be heroes.

One of the examples that I always love to use is that people who come to Disney World have a lot of questions, and as an employee or as a cast member, there's no way you can know the answer to every question. Since it is frustrating when somebody says, "I don't know," they put in a mechanism called Information 4500, where they keep a database of all of the questions that guests ask and the answers to those questions. So if you come up to me and ask me a question I don't know the answer to, I can just pick up the phone, dial 4500, say, "I've got this guest with this question", the person on the other end of the line answers it for me, and now two things happen: you the guest have the answer to your question, and the next time somebody asks that question, I've got the answer.

First, have a very clear understanding of what makes a superstar employee in whatever job category we're talking about. Second, build a competency-based interview, a structured interview based on that, so that you've really got a template or a benchmark of what you're looking for. When you're interviewing people, don't just listen to what they say and how they respond to those open-ended questions, but also just observe them. Are you seeing the behaviors that you want to see when they're out on the job?

You can't teach somebody to have attention to detail. You can't teach them to have empathy. They've got to bring those raw materials to the job, and then you can say, "Alright, now let's see how we can take those raw materials and apply them in the culture of our organization."

So when I'm working with organizations, I always say, "Listen and watch. Are you hearing what you want to hear? And are you seeing what you want to see?" Because don't think you're going to take somebody who doesn't have those things and put them through some magical training program that's going to change them, because it doesn't work.

Following that, there's a very strong emotional connection that's created during that initial training process of, "Here's what the guest experience is supposed to be, here's what the service non-negotiables are in the organization." For us at Disney, one of the non-negotiables was, if you're walking along as a cast member and you see a piece of trash on the ground, it's your job to go over, pick it up, and throw it away. We connect that practice with the number one compliment that Disney World gets, which is how clean the place is.

I went through that new hire training back in 1978, and I remember it like it was yesterday. If you ask any Disney cast member about their new hire orientation, which we called "Disney traditions", they will have a very clear memory of how powerful that time was.

Training is about introducing people to the culture and what we're all about and building that pride factor, that emotional connection before we start. After that, you can get into the mechanics of the job. In fact, many organizations make the mistake of jumping right into, "Okay, here's how you do this. Here's how you do this. Here's how you do this. Fill out this paperwork and okay, now go out and give great service."

The way we as leaders talk about our customers is another example. Sometimes I overhear leaders say terrible things about their customers and that perpetuates that throughout the organization. Similarly, sometimes leaders of a division complain about people in another division of the company and then expect their employees to be team players.

So “walk the talk” leadership is about: What are we doing? What are we saying? and How are we interacting with other people in other operations in our organization?

One of the terms that I like to use is, "Everything speaks." Every single thing that you do as a leader speaks so ask yourself, is it enhancing the experience and what you want to be happening, or is it detracting from it?

Getting a robotic response of, "Yeah, it's closed. I'm not sure when it'll be open" irritates people. They’ll have a different experience though if they’re told, "Oh, yeah, I know it's closed, but here's what's coming. This is why it's closed because we're adding this to it or this is what's going to happen or this is when it's going to reopen, so please come back at this time, and it'll be ready for you." It really depends on the situation of why it might be closed, but the idea is to demonstrate empathy with the guests, so that they understand that you understand their frustration and see that you care.

Sometimes I would say, "Yeah, Space Mountain is closed but I'll tell you what, if you go over to Big Thunder Mountain right now, it's open right now and the line isn't very long." If I could see somebody was really in meltdown mode because they came all the way from wherever to go on Space Mountain, I could easily call over to one of the other attractions and say, "Hey, I've sent this guest over to you, they're really upset about the situation, can you go ahead and put them right on the ride so that they don't have to wait in line?"

In this case extraordinary customer service is about reading the guest, reading the situation, and them understanding that you understand that they're frustrated. Again, it's not going to make them happy that Space Mountain is closed, but they feel like they've been respected and like they've been acknowledged.

To bring customer service speaker Dennis Snow to your organization, please contact Michael Frick at: Mike@Speaking.com