Creating Magic by Lee Cockerell

Author:Lee Cockerell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780385528283
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2008-10-13T16:00:00+00:00

6. Train people for Magical Moments and Take 5s. At Walt Disney World, Magical Moments are planned events designed to engage the Guests and enhance their experience. For example, every morning a family waiting on line is chosen to open the park officially, and one of their children even gets to make the announcement. At certain attractions, Cast Members select a child to introduce a show, and every time a train departs in the Animal Kingdom, two kids are named assistant conductors and get to shout, “All aboard!” And during parades, Cast Members round up children to dance in the street with Mickey and Donald and other characters. It’s not just the kids and their parents who love these moments; everyone watching loves them, and they rave about the experience when they go home.

Take 5s are more spontaneous. The Cast has been trained to seize opportunities to do something special for Guests: replace a spilled ice cream for free; walk an older person to the restroom; ask a little girl dressed like Cinderella for her autograph; tell a family something interesting about the park, like why there are special window displays on Main Street. Sometimes these moments are especially heartwarming, like the time a woman asked Mickey Mouse for an autograph to bring home to a little boy who was seriously ill. Mickey didn’t just sign his name; he wrote a long personal letter in the child’s autograph book.

Why are these individualized interactions called Take 5s? Because they blow the Guests’ minds in less than five minutes. Think of them as real-life versions of those random acts of kindness you read about on bumper stickers. At Disney they only seem random; the Cast Members are not only trained to look for Take 5 opportunities, but held accountable for making them happen.

Most Take 5s take closer to five seconds than five minutes, and from a business standpoint I can’t imagine a better use of time. All those seconds and minutes repeated thousands of times a day add up to better customer relations than you could buy with a big corporate PR budget. A letter I once received from a mother expressed it best. “I was looking for magic in all the wrong places,” she said. “Your staff is your magic.”

You might be thinking, “It’s easy for people at Disney World to do Take 5s and Magical Moments, but that kind of thing would never work in my business.” Really? Think about the variety of human interactions that take place within your organization and between your employees and the outside world. Aren’t there opportunities to make people feel a little more special? By teaching, coaching, and encouraging your employees to look for and seize these opportunities, you too can create extraordinary magic in your business.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.