What happens to customer service when there’s no urgency?

Disney customer service author Jeff Noel writing at USATF Annual meeting at Disney
United States Track and Field Annual Meeting at Walt Disney World Resort. Yes, you can even write from there.

What happens to customer service when there’s no urgency?

What happens to you when there’s no customer service urgency?

Recall what you accomplished when you had something super urgent?

Write it down now: What was it, why was it urgent, what was the outcome and why?

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Trapped in our customer service culture comfort?

Orlando Eye Ferris wheel
Relatively new Orlando icon, The Orlando Eye on International Drive. Went for a walk while having new tires added.

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Trapped in our customer service culture comfort?

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The customer service organization we could become will always be a barrier to what we are unwilling to give up.

The barriers revolve around the effort we will need to summon. This universally feels like too much energy, time, money, and discomfort.

So we don’t do anything.

Even when we choose not to decide, we still have made a choice.

What kind of customer service leader do you long to become?

What’s missing from making that happen?

What are you willing to change?

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This website is about our SPIRIT. To enjoy today’s post about our WORK, click here.

It doesn’t matter what customers look at

man with back turned at a softball field
Writing at Disney softball field at the Eastern end of Buena Vista Drive.

It doesn’t matter what customers look at, what matters is what customers see

When we focus on the surface, we risk missing everything else.

Imagine that for a moment.

You may marvel at Disney’s world-famous grooming guidelines and completely miss the fact that grooming guidelines aren’t the insight.

The insight is Disney’s uncompromising focus on delivering what the Guest wants.

The Guest wants something Magical, something no one else in the world provides.

And prior to Disneyland, the American standard for a Family outing was an Amusement Park, a Circus, a State Fair, a Carnival.

The American Carnival was a traveling show. Descending on a town, the Carnival would quickly set up in a vacant field or empty parking lot.

The mechanical rides never won awards for passenger safety.

The Carnival workers, known as “Carnies”, had a reputation for being unkempt.

Walt Disney ruptured the negative stereotypes and reinvented the industry, including the workers, becoming a category of one.

Why?

Because the Public would pay for quality, return often, and tell their friends.

Is there a customer you know who wouldn’t want that?

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This website is about our SPIRIT. To enjoy today’s post about our WORK, click here.

Make an uncommon customer service book

statement about how people do not change
This is a supreme reason for learning how to fully surrender.

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One of the ideas was making an uncommon book.

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Make a customer service book that flies in the face of what normal books look like?

Are you crazy?

  • What if people shun it?
  • What if it doesn’t work?

You can feel the logic in those questions because they’re no-brainer questions, questions every smart leader would ask.

But what about these.

  • What if people love it?
  • What if it works better than your wildest dreams?

Of course, there’s no guarantee either way.

This is why most people, and most organizations, stay on the tried and true path of good and very good.

The commitment to make excellence the only goal is scary for most.

Why?

Because it requires risk.

Risk scares people and organizations.

This is fundamental, elementary even.

And true.

But what if instead of being scary, risk was embraced as essential to your health and the health of your organization?

Not until leaders, and organizations, desire to make customer service risk-taking mandatory will cultural transformation start spreading its wings.

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This website is about our SPIRIT. To enjoy today’s post about our WORK, click here.

Customer Service Next Steps activity

Disney customer service author Jeff Noel taking some brief notes

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Customer Service Next Steps activity.

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Strike while the iron is hot. Iron is easily malleable when hot, and impossible to shape when not.

Now (yes, right now) is the time to write down some important, top-of-mind customer service thoughts.

Make a few lists and don’t fuss over minute details – this is high-level, very rough-draft thinking. Have fun, and don’t over-analyze. This should be quick:

Who (whom should you involve):

What (what needs to be done):

Where (where will the work occur):

When (when will the work happen):

How (how will the work be accomplished):

Why (why is this important; what’s to be gained by doing it, what’s to be lost by doing nothing):

How’d that feel?

Have you perceived what’s happened in the past few minutes?

You’ve just started planting, on paper, the seeds of intentional customer service behavior that will facilitate the slow and steady path forward to customer service transformation.

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This website is about our SPIRIT. To enjoy today’s post about our WORK, click here.