The Disney Process Magic

Yes yes - its been a while since I last blogged - a busy time on the work and home front - not least being a few weeks holidays with the family that had us slog through my all time favourite place - Heathrow airport - not once but three times - we'll come back to them.

One stopover was a trip to Tokyo Disney Land - a magical place for the true believers under 8 years old and also surprisingly a magical place for those of us interested in customer service and process driven things. I have been triggered today by someone elses visit to an American Disney franchise here.

Let me start by saying that Disney Land is not for the feint hearted as it is perhaps at the pinnacle of American commercialisation however the Tokyo location is almost surreal as it wraps a lovely Japanese-ness around the rapacious American core. Then again it is very much a Japanese domestic tourist destination and as an international tourist with none of the local language maybe I missed the more subtle nuances of how they extract extra cash from the wallets of the day's "guests".

Let me tell you what Disney Land is brilliant at - people processing. Yes, there are queues but they obsessively (and happily) tell you how long you will have to wait from check points - you knowingly choose to wait that long (we were generally at the "only 5/10 minutes from this point" on a rainy midweek day but there are plenty of "only 45 minutes from here" signs which would make for a very slow day). Yes, there are barriers setup to allow the daily parades to occur but they are very low key and are erected so subtly and disassembled so rapidly that they barely interfere with the crowds. Everytime you think "where is ...?" or "how do I ...?" or "I wonder if ...?" there is a smiling and willing "Cast Member" at hand to guide the way and with a charmingly over the top little flourish which I gather is the "Disney way" of giving directions throughout the franchise - and always with as genuine a smile as you could expect in this sort of environment - more of that great global training that Tom Hoobyar refers to. As a queue grows beyond the guide rails to contain it as if by magic additional rails are smoothly and quietly clicked into place to bring control back to the crowd. They know where they want the queues to form and they manufacture the queue in such a way as to get best space efficiency and least interference to the other spaces in the vicinity. The place is spotlessly clean and I got the impression that if you did drop any litter (deliberately or otherwise) a smiling sweeper would appear out of nowhere to pounce on it with glee. There isn't even a chip missing in any of the thousands of bench seats scattered everywhere. I was told by Ariel's (one of 6 apparantly) boyfriend in the queue at Narita on the way home that the maintenance crew works 24x7 to keep everything in near perfect condition - and it shows. As you walk around what is one of the top tourist destinations in the world there is no sense of shabbiness, over use, wear and tear or threadbare - the place is like new despite the millions of bodies that surge through it every year.

Now let's compare that to my nemesis - Heathrow - where do you start - 2 ends of the spectrum. Sure Disney is a commercial enterprise very focused on maximising the dollars it can extract out of your pocket and a destination you have actively chosen to visit - and Heathrow is probably neither of those - but does that excuse their unwillingness or inability to be efficient and effective at what they do? Just about any customer centric business (and what isn't these days) could benefit from a Disney-like culture of cast member engagement and obsession with efficiency. The Disney "successful guest outcome" was surprisingly seductive for this sceptic.