You Are Competing with Walt Disney

Bad News: You Are Competing with Walt Disney

I [The Author] stride into a coffee shop one morning, hopeful.

Four people are in line, but I decide I can bear that.

Unfortunately, nothing is in line behind the counter. A server hands Customer One a large decaf. The customer had asked for a small regular. The other server is flirting with Customer Two. It’s touching and nostalgic to me, but not entertaining enough to make me overlook the delay.

Four minutes later, I get my large latte.

Twenty years ago, I might have accepted that delay. Twenty years ago, I also accepted rest rooms carpeted with wet paper towels, waiters wearing catsup-stained aprons and chewing Bozooka bubble gum, and ten-day delivery from catalogs.

Then McDonald’s came along and raised everyone’s standards for rest rooms, better restaurants raised our expectations of waiters, and Federal Express raised our standards for catalog delivery. Those services changed our expectations forever.

Now we expect cleaner rest rooms, faster services, and more attentive waiters.

More people ever day have experienced extra ordinary service. Many have seen Disney World; they know how clean, friendly and creative service can be.

They have seen world-class service, and now every service has to accept it. Printers, for one wretched example, cannot expect their customers to tolerate service that meets printing industry standards if those industry standards fall below customers’ expectations, which they routinely do. The printers’ customers have been to Disney World, and that experience has raised their expectations.

A service that does not jump to meet these rising expectations will have a small revolution and a customer exodus on its hands.

Ignore your industry’s benchmarks, and copy Disney’s.

Extracts from “Selling the Invisible”