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Creating a Disney Level of Customer Service - 131

Creating a Disney Level of Customer Service - 131

Released Wednesday, 20th November 2024
Good episode? Give it some love!
Creating a Disney Level of Customer Service - 131

Creating a Disney Level of Customer Service - 131

Creating a Disney Level of Customer Service - 131

Creating a Disney Level of Customer Service - 131

Wednesday, 20th November 2024
Good episode? Give it some love!
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Episode Transcript

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0:01

Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to D2Z, a podcast about using the Gen Z mindset to grow your business.

0:06

I'm Gen Z entrepreneur Brandon Amoroso, founder of Electric and now the co-founder of Scaless.

0:12

Today I'm talking with Vance Morris, who's a customer service speaker and marketing strategist at Deliver Service Now Institute.

0:19

Thanks for coming on the show.

0:21

I appreciate it. Brandon, Thanks so much for having me on the show.

0:24

I appreciate it. Brandon, Thanks so much for having me. So before we jump into things, can you give everybody just a quick?

0:30

background on yourself, your career and sort of what you're up to now. Sure, I won't go back to growing up in a log cabin.

0:34

That's probably a little too far back, but we'll do the.

0:38

Actually, I was a guest earlier on another show and I talked about having a newspaper route.

0:44

And you know, she asked where did you learn your customer experience?

0:49

And I thought about it.

0:51

I said paper route. And this is my theory on the downfall of American society.

0:56

Not to get completely off topic, but kids don't do paper routes anymore.

1:00

And when I had my route, it was okay, put the paper between the screen door and the storm door.

1:05

No, I want it under the. It was okay, put the paper between the screen door and the storm door. No, I want it under the mat.

1:07

No, I want it in the garage. And so I learned at an early age to take care of customers, even though I was only 12 or 13.

1:15

But we can fast forward a bit.

1:17

I spent a little over a decade working for the mouse down in Orlando with the Walt Disney Company.

1:23

Decade working for the mouse down in Orlando with the Walt Disney Company, primarily in their resort division.

1:28

I did leave. People do leave. I started to realize I make a lousy employee.

1:33

I just don't like to be told what to do, so unsmartly had a couple more corporate jobs, worked primarily in hospitality, but I was fortunate enough to have some really nice accounts.

1:49

One of them was the executive office of the president of the US, which was pretty cool to have.

1:57

Nasa headquarters was another one, and then a whole bunch of different restaurants and things like that.

2:03

So Rainforest Cafe, legal Seafoods, just to name a couple.

2:08

After getting fired a couple of times, if you go back to the, I make a lousy employee.

2:13

Don't like being told what to do I said you know I'm going to start my own business.

2:20

So in 2007, I started a carpet cleaning business, which I know is what all small children dream of doing when they're growing up.

2:28

But I took all of my Disney knowledge, all of the experiences, all of the marketing and operations and I put it in there and I really created a premium level service.

2:40

To this day, our prices are very similar to Disney prices and we're about 35% higher than our closest competitor.

2:48

So when we talk about creating experiences, there is a monetary payoff in that.

2:57

People started asking me how the heck are you doing this?

2:59

And so I started coaching and consulting.

3:03

And so I started coaching and consulting.

3:07

Actually, take now.

3:14

Part of the great part of my job is taking business owners down to Disney for full immersion boot camps.

3:16

We're there for three or four days, spend some time in the classroom, some time in the theme parks, and at the end of it they come away with a blueprint on how to Disney-fy their business.

3:25

I like that. The industries that you mentioned, too, I think, could benefit a lot, at least from my experience with the customer service aspect of things you have, when it comes to, you know, working as a third party with some of these business owners who may or may not be, but I'm assuming, pretty stuck in their ways.

3:52

Yeah, well, they, well one.

3:55

I don't work with companies where the owner is not involved in this process.

3:58

So if I get handed off to like an HR or training department, I immediately stop and say, look, if you're not bought into this, then you know this is not going to work.

4:11

Well, I tried it once. I got handed off to a training department.

4:15

We came up with this grand plan, took about two months, went and presented it to the CEO and he said, yeah, no, we're not doing that.

4:22

Ceo, and he said, yeah, no, we're not doing that.

4:30

So you've got to have buy-in when you're not only from the CEO, but then you need buy-in from the team that is going to be implementing a lot of what we're talking about.

4:39

Yeah, I think that internal stakeholder buy-in is super important.

4:41

Even with the new business that I started is selling to the HR department executive.

5:00

Stakeholder buy-in is critical, not only for their ability to affect change but for us to be able to make sure that the company actually adopts the solution and platform effectively, Because if it's not coming from the top down, then it's really hard to get that buy-in.

5:18

Yeah, especially when they don't have an understanding of what it is we're actually doing.

5:22

So, yeah, 100%.

5:24

So what are some of the things that, if you're a business owner and listening to this, you know top three things that companies aren't doing that they should be doing.

5:33

When it comes to that, you know? Service aspect.

5:36

Well, do you want me to get like really tactical, or you want me to kind of go strategy level?

5:42

We go strategy level and then we can deep dive on one.

5:51

Well, I think you know, first and foremost, they think customer service is a department and not a method of doing business, and I think that's one of the things that separates a lot of companies from well, not a lot a few companies from the chafe that's floating around, in that everybody is responsible for the experience of the guest.

6:12

I just hosted my mastermind meeting at a Ritz-Carlton in Washington DC, and before we were going back in, everybody had a bathroom break and while I was in there I noticed a gentleman, pretty well dressed, just wiping the counters down.

6:26

And we came in after the lunch break and he was the general manager of the resort doing a little presentation for us, and I was floored and I said well, do your employees generally use the restroom?

6:42

He goes yes, we encourage employees to use the public restrooms because that is that many more sets of eyes that are on the problem, and I don't ask anybody to do something that I won't do myself.

6:55

So, again, you know, walking the talk is absolutely vital, I think, for small businesses, one of the things that really, as a strategy, doesn't seem to work is pretending that you are something you're not, and by that I mean pretending that you're this big company.

7:20

I had a guy. He was a carpet cleaner and he had a residential division, a commercial division, a janitorial division and one other.

7:29

He was one guy and he even had a little phone tree set up, you know press, one for commercial, two for residential.

7:37

They all went to his cell phone.

7:39

But what people don't understand is that people don't do businesses.

7:44

Don't do business with businesses, they do business with people.

7:48

Um, so when you're trying to inflate yourself and do that um, you're really shooting yourself in the foot.

7:54

And then, tactically, on this, this unreal um is answering the phone live.

8:04

Real is answering the phone live.

8:10

There's no reason in this day and age that your phone cannot be answered live, especially if you are advertising your phone number.

8:14

So I'm a partner in a call center and when we were setting it up we did a little bit of a examination of the marketplace and we made 4,000 phone calls to home service businesses in the US.

8:31

17% of those people answered the phone live and these were all phone numbers we got from Google pay-per-click.

8:42

So customer businesses are paying for their phone to be advertised and they're not answering it.

8:49

That just blows my mind.

8:53

Yeah, I mean, there's just wasted money at that point.

9:12

We look at it. If they hired a call center, the call center only has to book two jobs for the average home service business and they've paid for themselves.

9:17

Everything else is gravy. So if you think you're going to answer the phone while you're on a job like if you're a plumber and you got your head in the toilet you know you're not answering the phone.

9:25

If you're a carpet cleaner, you can't just stop working and answer the phone because your customer is going to get irritated.

9:30

And if you let it go to voicemail and think you're going to return the call later, well, that customers already going on to the next number in the list on Google.

9:43

Yeah, I think the first thing that you mentioned around, the people shop from people, not from businesses, and the most successful startups Because there was a little bit of a nuance.

10:09

When it's been around for a while and it has some brand reputation and legacy, then it might not need to be as founder-facing.

10:14

But any of the companies we worked with who had started 2019 or 2020 onwards, they had their founder at the forefront of their website, their messaging, their materials, the whole backstory of why the company had been started, even sending marketing emails and texts from the founder themselves, like selfies of them in the warehouse or in a particular setting where it related to why they started the company to begin with.

10:40

And those were far more successful than the businesses that did not want to share or showcase any of their personal involvement with it.

10:49

And you see it on LinkedIn too.

10:51

If you post a post on LinkedIn and you do it through your personal account, it gets way more reach than if you post it through the business account, and there's just more and more examples of that in different areas Well, that's how Dollar Shave came to life.

11:06

was the owners doing those kooky videos on YouTube, riding around the warehouse on a forklift and all that stuff?

11:15

They were the face and personality of the company.

11:20

That's really how it took off.

11:25

I think I watched that last week for some reason, but it isn't that old, but it feels like a lifetime ago when they came out with that and that was one of the first businesses that uh leaped into sort of that viral humor, led marketing, and I think that's more and more commonplace now.

11:43

But there was a hesitancy for a long time, uh, businesses to want to still look really like corporate and professional.

11:49

And now you look at companies like Duolingo or ClickUp or some of these other ones that are on TikTok, basically as meme accounts, even like the Taco Bell Twitter, chipotle Instagram I think there's a bunch of examples like that.

12:03

Chipotle Instagram I think there's a bunch of examples like that. You know, that's what resonates with the audience and it is just been slower than one would expect, I think, in terms of adoption, but now it's sort of the norm for companies to try to tap into that.

12:15

Yeah, even if you're not going to do TikTok and Instagram and Twittering and whatever else out there, at least have your story on your about page.

12:27

You know, I mean that is.

12:29

I mean that is the personality of the brand and unfortunately, we are all in commoditized business, highly commoditized businesses.

12:37

I mean, what's the difference between dentist A, dentist B and dentist C?

12:42

I mean, there's only two ways to clean teeth, right?

12:44

So what separates each one of those dentists?

12:47

And it's essentially the in-office experience that each of them provides.

12:51

Otherwise, it all just kind of blends together.

12:57

How do you manage, if you're a growing business, the level of service when it's not just you who's responsible for it?

13:05

And I mean you worked at an extreme example.

13:07

You know, disney has tens of thousands of employees, if not hundreds, but, um, you know how do they keep that level of service across all of those team members?

13:16

Because if it's just you and you're a solopreneur, that's a lot easier to keep that service level when you're the only one that is needing to be held accountable versus, you know, hundreds, if not thousands, of people well, certainly so.

13:30

One of the first things actually, I learned there wasn't even really customer service.

13:34

Uh, it was that disney ran on systems and processes and all of them are documented.

13:41

So when you know a know, a lot of times you know bosses will do reviews and they'll say things.

13:47

Well, you know, johnny does it this way, or Sarah does it this way, and that's really unfair to the employee because you should be comparing them to the standards.

13:57

So I have even solopreneurs who want to grow beyond just themselves and you know, envision having a team.

14:05

I say start documenting what it is you do, and it doesn't have to be anything you know, extravagant.

14:13

Get a couple of Google Sheets and just start or record it you know on your phone and have it transcribed.

14:19

But Disney runs on three words. That's it.

14:22

What to do, how to do it.

14:25

And the most important one, which most people forget, is why we do it that way.

14:29

So when we were designing Chef Mickey's, which is one of the character dining destinations, we had a what, how and why for everything in the restaurant.

14:42

For everything in the restaurant, because the employee needed to know what to do.

14:47

Take a reservation.

14:53

They needed to know how to do it. Okay, here's the reservation system.

14:56

You click this, this, this and that. Why do we do it? Well, because when we properly use the registration system, excuse me, reservation system, we can ensure that the weights are going to be very minimal and that everybody's going to be ensured to have a great experience.

15:11

So it's that why part of your process and your systems that's vital if you have employees.

15:19

But process and systems.

15:21

Actually, I read something a couple of weeks ago that if you have documented systems in your business, whether they're marketing systems, operational systems, service systems, etc.

15:32

Your business is worth 1.5 to 2x more just because you have those systems.

15:40

The thing that I was very focused on with the agency, because obviously it's a people business, so one of the toughest things for an agency owner is to remove themselves from the day-to-day of it, but that's where the value comes from.

16:00

If you ever want to exit the company, either as let somebody else run it or to sell it to somebody else, and those processes is what allows you to do that.

16:04

Those processes is what allows you to do that. That being said, one of the things that I really focused on was making sure that the team understood that just because there was a process doesn't mean that you know that's the way that it should be done until the end of time, and that you know they can always change and be improved upon, because I have seen organizations where you just get completely ground down by process and you have no ability to affect change either, even if you're doing something and you're just like this makes no sense anymore, and that can be really demotivating for a team member.

16:37

Which is why we have process improvement teams at Disney where we revisit all the processes and we're like does this still make sense?

16:47

Do we need to continue to do this?

16:50

Do we need to do more of this?

16:53

Walt Disney actually is the guy who came up with the term.

16:56

It's called plussing, you know, constant process improvement.

16:59

How do we consistently and constantly improve the show that we're providing, whether that be through food service or attractions or movies?

17:08

We don't just sit back on those systems.

17:12

So, yeah, I 100% agree with you.

17:15

You mentioned the reservation booking system, which leads me into a question around technology and how much of a help or a hindrance that can be for these business owners that you're working with Either a lack of technology or using technology that's not servicing their needs or the customer's needs well and how that has an impact, and I'm assuming has been even greater and greater over the last five years here.

17:44

It is, and the one piece of technology that every business needs to have whether you're one person or 10,000, is a really good CRM or customer relations management system, because otherwise you're just you don't know who's done what, when you have no way of doing any real marketing to them, you have no way of doing any real follow-up.

18:10

You know so with our CRMs that we use I mean with our carpet cleaning business, for example we know that it's been six months since their last cleaning, and so we have a campaign that automatically runs and sends out the six-month reminder postcard, and then it does it at nine months.

18:27

I don't even have to do anything the system just does. it zaps it to the printer and doing.

18:31

You know the mailings all go out.

18:35

It's also the place where you keep notes for you know any conversations.

18:39

You also keep likes and dislikes.

18:42

You know what are. If they have regular requests like don't park in the driveway, just park on the street, okay great.

18:47

Well, if you have regular requests like don't park in the driveway, just park on the street, Okay great.

18:49

If you got to constantly write that down or never write it down, well then you're going to consistently irritate your customer because they've told you six times don't park in the driveway and you're still doing it.

19:02

Well, if you don't have a method for getting those instructions to the guy who's driving, that's how you lose customers.

19:10

So managing the customer database and mining that for information is paramount.

19:21

I mean, it's mission critical that you have one.

19:26

The easiest customer to get is the one that you already had Exactly.

19:31

They've already bought from you.

19:32

Service is the lowest hanging fruit and more often than not, I feel like businesses forget about that and whether it's because of technology or whatever it may be the low hanging fruit.

19:45

Like you're mentioning the six month automation, I mean you could disappear for months and those would still go out the door and would still be, you know, driving the business forward.

19:54

Well, 100% yeah. And the other thing that business owners forget or never get told is that it is extremely expensive to get a new customer.

20:04

It is a lot cheaper to keep the ones that you have Now.

20:08

For example, I just got my pay-per-click report from my Google guy and while my click cost was okay, for some reason my customer acquisition cost was through the roof.

20:27

It cost me $150 last month to get one new customer, and that is an expensive deal, especially for a carpet cleaner.

20:37

It only cost me $14 a year to keep them through postcards and emails and newsletters.

20:46

So, yeah, don't forget about the ones you already have.

20:50

To get them to either cross-sell them into something else, remind them to do a service that they should have, promote new products to them, because they're the ones especially if you've done a good job the first time they're the ones that are going to continue to buy from you.

21:07

Yeah, and in the service industry, word of mouth is so, so critical to growth.

21:12

I mean, I'm pretty sure when I moved to um, moved to Miami, say, 90% of whether it was doctors or dentists, contractors, uh, plumber, cleaning services, whatever it may be I'm I'm not even necessarily going to Google to find that.

21:29

I'm reaching out to folks that I know in and around the area and then they're giving me who their best person is, and they're not going to do that if your level of service is crappy, so it pays off in so many different areas.

21:42

Yeah, and it also, even if you had great service but they've forgotten about you because you haven't communicated with them after the initial sale, then I mean, it's not customers' jobs to remember us, it's our job as business owners to remind customers that we exist and the only way to stay top of mind, especially if you have I mean, let's just say you have an annual service.

22:08

You know that's 365 days for them to forget about you.

22:12

So you've got to stay consistently in front of them so that A when the time comes for them to buy again, you're there and they don't go on a Google search.

22:22

Or when somebody asks hey, do you know a good dentist?

22:26

Oh yeah, I just got my dentist newsletter the other day.

22:29

Here you go. So yeah, it's important.

22:35

Yeah, the last week I tried to find the moving company that I used to take some stuff from one place to another a few months ago and I need to use a moving company again rather shortly and I couldn't, for the life of me, remember the name of it and of course, you know, they never even really communicated with me I think it was primarily via text to probably not even through a business phone number, through, you know, the personal cell phone of whoever was doing that move.

23:00

And, um, I did finally find it, but I mean, most people would probably not have gone through the hassle that I went through to to get to that point.

23:10

Well, it's crazy that you know there's businesses out there that think they're one and dones, you know, like a moving company.

23:15

I mean, how often do you move?

23:20

Probably not too frequently. So they figure, all right, we got them once, that's it.

23:22

But you just proved the point that well, hey, I've got some other stuff that I move.

23:27

I need to move from this point to this point.

23:29

Love for you guys to do it again, but I don't remember who the heck you are.

23:34

Yeah, exactly. Well, I appreciate you coming on and sharing these insights with us, but before we hop, can you share?

23:50

where people can find and connect with you online if they want to learn more about your business or just leveling up their service in general.

23:54

Yeah sure, best bet's my website, which is deliverservicenowcom. A whole bunch of free resources that you can grab there, so more than enough to keep you busy for a while.

24:03

Actually, you can even download a free copy of my book there, so deliverservicenowcom is the best place.

24:09

Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you coming on. For everybody listening, it's Brandon Amoroso.

24:13

You can find me at brandonamorosocom or scalistai.

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