Guestology: Marketing Research Disney Style

By J.K. Radomski

ORLANDO - Companies that excel at making fickle clients happy are usually the ones that can guess their wants before they become needs.

Do you have a call report ready for your client before they’ve realized they needed one? Do you print a paper survey on both sides of the page because you know a particular client has become obsessed with recycling? Or do you print your cross-tabs on 3-punch-paper and insert them into a magenta-colored, leather binder because it’s going to become the next big thing?

Put that phone down. There’s no need to give Miss Cleo or any one of her psychic phone friends a call. You can improve your customer service without any extra sensory powers.

DisneyWorld does it all they time. They even have a name for it. Guestology.

Last issue I looked at how the Disney company seems to compete in business by promoting an aggressive, but friendly, brand of customer service. It’s ingrained in its culture, and a part of why Disney calls its customers Guests, and refers to its staff as Cast Members. And it’s what makes it not only a competitor to nearby theme parks, but to blue-chip companies such as FedEx and L.L. Bean, and your business too.

We discovered that part of Disney’s competitive philosophy is that they know their Guests compare experiences across businesses and industry lines. If your client gets better service when they order Chinese take out than when they’re requesting a quick tally of completed interviews, they might rank your service a notch lower. They’ll keep ordering the shrimp and lobster sauce, but will they keep calling on you for their field work?

We also discovered the solution lies in improving one’s customer service. Improving one’s phone manner, response time, or going above and beyond when it’s called for, can do that. But it can also be done via guestology, or what we non-Cast Members might call internal market research, or researching your clients to know who they are and what they want.

At DisneyWorld, guestology is performed using standard industry tools: one-on-one interviews with park guests using hand-held computers, comment cards at restaurants, usage and visitation studies which monitor movement patterns at the resort, mystery shopping, and phone surveys with random members of the population and recent guests.

For the most part, this marketing research lets DisneyWorld know who their Guests are: the basic demographics, the number of people in a party, what their expectations are while they’re there, and what their opinions might be after their vacation, when the credit card statement has come in.

By understanding its guests and their patterns, Disney can find ways to better please them.

For instance, knowing guests might be a little older and there might be less kids around just before Thanksgiving, might make the first few weeks in November the best time to hold a food and wine festival at Epcot which is geared towards adults. Or, guests who stay at the resorts might be more prone to relax in their rooms after a long day at the parks, hence the introduction of an on-site, pizza-delivery service to accommodate late-night snacking.

And this is exactly the kind of thing we do all the time for everyone else’s surveys, but it’s something that many companies don’t consider doing internally - for themselves.

It’s a relatively simple thing to do too: just develop an internal survey you can fill in that looks at whom each of your clients are and what they mean for your company. You can even collect the information in a database and tabulate the data.

Some of the questions you might ask could include: Are they mainly East or West Coast and are they in your time zone? Do you handle all their work, some of their work, or just overflow? Are they large or small companies? What portion of your yearly sales do they represent? Are they seasonal? Do they know you now offer web-surveys? Are they MRA members? How do you rate them as clients? What industry are they in: pharmaceutical, public opinion polls, or advertising? And so on.

This kind of information can better help you target your marketing efforts by making you see who your current clients are and who your prospective clients should be.

Another part of DisneyWorld’s guestology system is probably its most effective. It doesn’t involve surveys or any means of directly obtaining the information that will later be used to help exceed customer expectations. It involves listening.

Think of this as qualitative research.

Disney listens by setting up listening posts throughout its theme parks. Aside from the Guest relations station - which deals immediately with questions or concerns and can report on the kind of things that come up - every Cast Member, from ride operator to custodian, is part of the listening post process.

While manning the entrance to the Haunted Mansion, a Cast Member might overhear a guest complain about the lack of air conditioning at that attraction’s entrance. The Cast Member will then poll other Guests, while making casual conversation, about the air conditioning there.

“Do you find it really hot here?” “Is it the air conditioning working okay for you?”

If they discover that a lot of Guests are complaining, or seem to be uneasy about the heat, the Cast Member will report their findings and the air conditioning system will be checked, fixed if needed, or just turned up.

Other times it might just be a Cast Member asking you where you’re from. True, they might be curious and they’re probably making genuine conversation, but they’re also doing market research, or putting on their Mouse Ears, so to speak. A simple question such as this helps Disney keep track of when locals visit, when visitors from a specific state make the trip, and when residents from another country visit the Magic Kingdom.

Cast Members will also meet at the end of a shift to discuss how their day went, and where they encountered any bumps or glitches. Similar problems will be examined in depth so solutions can be found.

A few years back, Disney executives were considering an overhaul to the menu of a popular park restaurant. They felt it was boring and were personally tired of it. The waiters told them otherwise. They said repeat visitors commented on how certain items had become comfort foods. The menu stayed the same and the waiters were thanked for using their ears.

This form of qualitative research can also be applied to your company. And all it takes is alerting your staff to keep their ears open.

Are your clients telling you that your fax machine runs out of paper every night? Maybe you can delegate someone to check it before leaving.

Do clients tell you the email receipts they’re asked to send back upon reading your emails annoy them? Maybe it’s time to ask other clients the same question, and develop a company-wide policy.

Are their clients telling your project managers they have trouble getting through to them during lunchtime because the phone is always busy? Maybe it’s time to restrict personal phone calls during these hours. And so on.

Take the time to listen to what your customers are saying via your co-workers and all employees. And help foster an environment where everyone at your company can discuss what they hear, maybe at a weekly meeting, or by jotting a quick note and sending an email to your company’s “head listener”.

There’s bound to be some free, valuable information there that can improve your customer service and prepare you for your clients’ current and future needs. And you don’t need Mickey Mouse ears to do so.

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