Customers 1st: Create Unforgettable Customer Experiences like Disney

Since 1923, The Walt Disney Company has been delighting its customers with an enchanting and diverse approach to entertainment. As the envy of marketers across the world, the Disney brand has become a global household name with a mass of dedicated followers of all ages.

So how exactly does Disney do it? Simple: It focused on the customer.

For years, Disney has worked to really understand its customers and to develop a culture that is centered on the creation of great customer experiences. In today’s competitive marketplace, great experiences drive brand advocacy and revenue improvements.

The Disney customer experience can be replicated, enabling retailers to leverage experiences as catalysts for improved advocacy. The key to replicating Disney’s customer experience is to place the customer at the center of brand culture. By reorienting the brand around customers’ needs and emotions, catering to these preferences, and igniting positive emotional bonding, retailers can achieve outcomes like Disney’s.

By following Disney’s lead, paying attention to the details that matter, retailers can develop customer experiences that wow consumers and differentiate their brands. According to Retail Customer Experience, here are some ways to make your customer experience as unforgettable as Disney’s:

Show Clarity. Retailers often try to create a first-rate customer experience according to their pre-conceived notions instead of gathering customer feedback. But, the creation of the customer experience must begin by asking the right questions and identifying elements that hit home with consumers. These insights will allow you to use customer intelligence to design a customer experience strategy that reinforces your brand’s appealing qualities.

Amplify Strengths. After you have determined how the customer experience should feel to customers, then you must amplify the volume of your brand’s most desirable characteristics. By magnifying the traits that make your customers feel good about buying your products, you can better align the customer experience with customers’ needs.

Image via dailypix.me

Engage Employees. Employees play a key role in the execution of customer experiences. Like Disney, it’s important to empower your workforce to forge connections with customers around targeted dimensions of the customer experience, equipping them with insights about what draws consumers to your brand.

Outperform Expectations. Great brands go above and beyond for their customers. In many cases, value-added products enhance the customer experience and play a role in differentiating the brand experience from the competition.

Create Connections. Disney knows how to build long-term, personal relationships with its customers. By understanding customers on a personal level, the brand has converted scores of satisfied customers into brand advocates.

Overall, Disney’s success comes from its ability to create customer experiences that reflect the needs of audiences. By developing a deeper understanding of your customers through feedback mechanisms, you can dramatically improve the impact of your customer experience strategy.

About the Author: Amanda Ciccatelli, Social Media Strategist of the Marketing Division at IIR USA, has a background in digital and print journalism, covering a variety of topics in business strategy, marketing, and technology. Amanda is the Editor at Large for several of IIR’s blogs including Next Big Design, Customers 1st, and ProjectWorld and World Congress for Business Analysts, and a regular contributor to Front End of Innovation and The Market Research Event,. She previously worked at Technology Marketing Corporation as a Web Editor where she covered breaking news and feature stories in the technology industry. She can be reached at aciccatelli@iirusa.com. Follow her at @AmandaCicc.