This past March I had the opportunity to attend the ACC Excellence Summit featuring the Disney Institute. A three-day leadership training course, the sessions were informative and really helped clarify the next steps for the company and for me as a leader. Over the course of the summit, we covered leadership, employee engagement, and quality service — all topics we ”think we know lots about.“ However, when you learn about it first-hand from a Disney perspective, it teaches you an entirely new approach.
Disney’s Approach to Quality Service
Following the first day on leadership excellence, we dove headfirst into learning how Disney’s approach to quality service can be applied in any business — even in our lean but mighty agency. Why is that? “Exceptional service [like Disney’s] is achievable for every organization because exceptional service is architected from systems and processes that you control.” This means that exceptional service is more than just a motivational poster on a wall, it is about repeatable systems, standards, and processes, that are unique to your organization. They will also help to create an exceptional service strategy that sets you apart from other companies in your space.
What did we learn at Disney Institute’s quality service training, and how do we aim to set ourselves apart with unique quality service standards? Read on to find out!
1. One way to establish significant service differentiation is by challenging an industry stereotype. One of the ways we achieve this at The Agency is by being extremely up front and open with our clients. Extensive monthly reporting, weekly check-ins with clients, weekly ‘State of the Union’ emails – we are not a mystery box, you know what you are spending your money on here. This helps clients feel comfortable with us and builds a lot of trust, something we repeatedly hear is often lacking or missing altogether from client-agency relationships.
2. Consistency is key with quality service, and service is manifested everywhere your organization engages with the customer. Think holistically about the experience and go beyond the obvious areas. This specific exercise was one of my favourites because it really encouraged us to look at how our clients (and potential clients) engage with The Agency. Taking it one step further, it helped us review and audit the company as a whole, and how our brand interacts with the public and how we could potentially improve on that.
3. Failure happens. But what matters is how you recover from it. One way that organizations can recover better from a “failure” is to develop processes for service recovery. Though it doesn’t happen often at The Agency, if we have a “service recovery” situation where we need to learn from a mistake, we have found a postmortem discussion to be most helpful. We have an honest conversation with all team members involved to determine what went wrong, and talk about how to rectify the situation before it gets to that point if we’re faced with the same challenge again.
Your Turn to “Earn Your Ears”!
We applied some great learnings from this workshop to our business, and we want to share this opportunity with our network. Registration for the 2020 ACC Excellence Summit featuring the Disney Institute is open, and the last three years have sold out! As “Marketing Superstars” of the 2020 Summit, we hope we’ll see you there on March 3-5, 2020 in Calgary.This is your chance to discover, as Disney Institute says, “the method behind the magic”!
Learn more about Disney’s approach to quality service!
Header Image Credit: © Disney Images
