Hi! Managers: Commitment to customers

Last month I went to a famous university early on a Sunday morning to attend the rehearsal of the graduation ceremony. After all the graduates had entered the auditorium, I went to a big-brand coffee shop located at one of the university's faculties and found many people standing outside the glass front doors. On the front door was written: Mon -Fri, 07.30 - 19.00hrs/Sat - Sun - Holidays, 09.00 - 17.00hrs. At the time it was 9.10am, but two employees inside the shop kept on cleaning and putting things into place without glancing at their customers waiting outside. I had to join those neglected customers and wait for 10 more minutes before the door was opened at 9.20am.

The negligence of those coffee-shop employees reminded me of a special seminar arranged by Tri Petch Isuzu Sales in Tokyo in 2009 for Isuzu dealers from Thailand during a trip to Japan. The guest speaker was a former executive of Tokyo Disneyland, whose seminar topic was "The Impressive Service that I Learned from Tokyo Disneyland". I would like to share some of his thoughts.

Tokyo Disneyland has 18,000 part-timers among its 20,000 employees, with 600 types of jobs. The mission of all Disney "cast members" is "to deliver happiness to guests". Notice that the words "cast members" and "guests" are used instead of "employees" and "customers".

It is common for all types of businesses to want their customers to feel satisfied, but Tokyo Disneyland also wants every guest to take good memories back home and recall them over and over again, until their next visit.

The daunting enemies of Disney cast members are habituation and boredom. After working for a while, they get used to their surroundings and the freshman's excitement disappears. To overcome these things, business leaders should arrange regular meetings with employees and motivate them with impressive messages, together with good and bad examples of routine services.

Tokyo Disneyland succeeds in making its cast members try their best at routine tasks. That is why it has ranked the third-most visited theme park in the world after the Magic Kingdom at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida and Disneyland in California. Not only has Tokyo Disneyland continuously earned good profits, it also has 98 per cent repeat visitors because its routine services impress its guests and generate more and more "Disney fans".

The following were some of the examples our guest speaker quoted during our special seminar:

-Tokyo Disneyland always opens at 9.00am sharp, without being even one second late.

-Its cast members wash the floors and walls every day to leave every part of the theme park neat, clean and in good order.

-Since Tokyo Disneyland places great importance on hospitality and employee cultivation, cast members who cannot maintain those standards on any given day are not allowed to appear in front of the guests.

-Disney character-related merchandise sells like hot cakes at Tokyo Disneyland, even though there are more than 70 chain stores in Japan selling 2,000 items that are different from those at Tokyo Disneyland. Its tremendous success results from the concept, "customers buy products from people". So, its people have to sell memories more than the souvenirs themselves.

Taking these tips from Tokyo Disneyland, business leaders should review the behaviour standards of their own employees, as customer commitment plays an important role in both business growth and sustainability, because it leads to customer loyalty and involvement. Business executives have to groom their employees at every branch to develop self-discipline and hold themselves to the highest standards of customer commitment.

They must realise that each and every customer enables them to earn their living because his or her patronage keeps the business going. Without customers, there would be no business.

Panatda Chennavasin is the vice president for Corporate Strategies and Corporate Relations of Tri Petch Isuzu Sales, as well as senior vice president for overseas marketing of Isuzu Operations (Thailand). Follow her articles in Hi! Managers on every third Wednesday of the month.