002 How Disney Creates 5 Star Magic Everyday with Dan Cockerell

The 5 Star Experience Show

Dan Cockerell worked at Disney for 19 years and ended his career there as the VP of Disney's Magic Kindom.

Purchase his book 'How's the Culture in Your Kingdom' here

For more information about Dan and his mastermind community called The Perch go to: https://cockerellconsulting.com/

Here are the takeaways from today’s episode:

1. Have a guest centric approach - Continuously look at the experience you provide from the guest’s point of view.
2. Be Empathetic - Put yourself in your customer’s shoes so that you can see how easy or hard your experience is for your customers. Look at your guest’s needs and give them what they need before they even have to ask for it
3. Creating great customer experiences has nothing to do with resources or money - It’s about the standards you put into place and executing on these high standards every single day
4. Anyone can create a memorable moment - Make your experience over the top so that it is unarguably the best. Make people want to participate and be there. What people are looking for is experiences
5. Give your employees a framework around their position or role but give them the latitude to create their own memorable moments for your customers
6. Train Purpose First - Train all new employees on the purpose of your business before anything else. Every employee should have the same purpose which creates alignment and camaraderie in your organization.
7. When you’re making big business decisions make sure that you are looking at how it impacts everyone that is impacted from your customers to your employees to your bottom line. If you weight each category based on importance your solution will become clear
8. You don’t have to do everything at a world class level - Find out which things your customers care about most and over deliver on those items. Figure out what moves the needle and consistently focus on and improve these things.
9. Take away your customer’s pain points - Additionally, can you do this in a way that gives your company even greater wins?
10. When you’re implementing something new don’t assume that it will be executed perfectly in the beginning - Always have an immediate recovery plan for when you fall short
11. The #1 way to deliver great service regularly at a high energy level is to hire the right people. 20% of your employees are likely creating 80% of your experiences
12. Open up the possibilities for your employees - Lead brainstorming sessions with them to come up with fun ways to both reduce the monotony of their job and also enhance your customer’s experience.
13. Get outside of your own thinking - Get creative! Give your employees a half day to come up with 10 fun things that you can implement together in your business to differentiate yourself from your competitors. Group up and discuss over a meal - make it special for your employees.
14. Don’t discount secondary magical moments
15. Value your employees - Find ways to recognize those that are going above and beyond in a way that uplifts them and gives an example of what outstanding looks like to the rest of your team
16. Always be proactive - Work to continuously improve even the good things in your business to ensure that they don’t become a problem
17. Inspire your employees to take ownership over their role
18. Keep the main thing the main thing - “As a leader if you create the right environment for your people you will maximize their ability to deliver over the top experiences for your customers.”
19. Go be excellent everyday - Don’t settle for Good or “very good” - All you should care about is excellent!