Page 95 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

76 The Disney Way

Many customer-feedback tools, such as surveys and focus groups, require
a considerable investment of people, time, and money to put in place.
Evaluate your budget to ensure that you are not skimping on these critical
activities. Recognize also that you have a wealth of customer information
at your fingertips just waiting to be tapped. Consider anyone who has
customer contact as a barometer for measuring both positive and negative
customer perceptions. Ask accounting clerks and order entry clerks alike to
call customers and ask the simple question, “How did we do on that delivery
last week?”
Simple efforts like these let your customers know that you care about
their experiences. They also send a clear message to employees about the
value of customer perceptions.
In his recent interview with Jan Carlzon, former CEO and turn-
around architect of Scandinavian Airlines, Bob Thompson, CEO of
CustomerThinkCorp, asked Jan about his application of what he famously
termed “moments of truth”—the various points at which the airline’s
employees came in contact with their customers. Through numerous inter-
views with his customers, Jan made the startling discovery that the perceptions
of his company did not match those of his customers. In Jan’s own words,
“We asked them about different things: What is your perception about our
head office? What is your perception of our technical and maintenance station?
What is your perception about our aircraft and so forth? What is your per-
ception about meeting with people? We found out that the only perception
they really had was the meeting with people. We did the research to prove a
point to the technical and operation people, to convince them that their tools
were no longer, perhaps, the most important we have.”

The Positive and Negative Power of Perception

The Physics Department at San Jose State University prided itself on hav-
ing a freshman physics class that was so difficult that 50 percent of the
students routinely flunked out of or dropped the class. One semester, a
professor decided to do an experiment. In the first of two identical classes,
he stated during his opening lecture that 50 percent of the students would
flunk or drop out. In his second class, he stated that the normal flunk-out
rate was 50 percent, but in looking through the students’ transcripts, he was
astounded to see that everyone in this class had an exceptional aptitude in
math and science.