Today at the Merchant Center podcast episode number 12. In this episode, we're gonna learn a new customer service strategy using something called The Disney Way. An approach that starts with changing the word customer to guest. It ends with you having a new superpower that will reward your business with customer attendance, customer money, And most of all, customer love, plot twist. It's based simply on approving the way you treat people. Are you ready for the last episode of 2016?
Then let Carol 1 last time. Why? Because I really love this too. Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and are still enjoying Hanukkah. If this episode drops, it'll only be a few days before New Year's Eve. So this is the this is me speaking to you from the past, from last year. But thank you for joining me for the last episode of the merchandiser podcast. No. No. No. Not the last episode. Just the last episode of 2016.
We returned January 10 2017. That's gonna be hard to say now. 2017. Now we all been between 2016. But with 2017, with episode number 13, yes, lucky number 13. Put the closeout 2016. I'm your professional recognier, your teacher, your merchant of dirt, your host, and the man who once uses superpowers to empty an entire dive tower with just his happy thoughts. Sorry for another time. I'm Kyle Bondo. Our website, of course, is merchandiser.com.
And if you're new to the merchandiser podcast, welcome aboard. This is your personal trail guide through the complex world of recreational engineering. Where I help you simplify the business of off road race promotion, And we make art and science behind building, promoting, and directing off of races understandable, which is really important. Along with me is the wrecker of races, the destroyer of world, and the collective bid numbers from race companies that no longer exist,
my determined cohost that everyone loves the hate Mister Murphy. And together, we're on a mission to teach you how to build better races. And, UGG, man, did Christmas really kind of wreck me? You talk about you probably notice I'm a little in the middle. Well, nasally today, I have a a nice seasonal cold, which doesn't seem to wanna let up. So I'm highly medicated.
Got my got my coffee right here. My Rick's roasters, 4 horsemen. And I seem to be only with 3 horsemen. The 4th horsemen, he's not feeling so well. That's probably pestilence. Right? Some some rub on my hand. But it's a it's kind of a it's kind of 1 of those Last thing to do before we closed out the year, of course, is the last podcast episode for this year. And just kinda looking back and thinking about when I started this podcast in October, I didn't think 12 episodes was easy to obtain.
They say that most podcasts die at 7, They call it podfeeding. The diet 7 episodes. But here we are at 12, and 13 is on the way in 2017.
And We're gonna be deep into the twenties and thirties and forties by the end of 2017. You know, that's a way off from now, but it's just great that you've you've stuck along. Enjoy the ride. And hopefully, you've learned something. But through the past 12 episodes, I hope you learned a bunch. And in 2017, I got a lot of great episodes planned. I got some great information put out there. Some some tidbits, some tips, some lessons learned
that will help you make better raises in 2017. That's the goal. I'm also planning releasing a couple couple of products. The 90 day road map is my first one's gonna come out. It'd be some some simple leads to pull off the shelf and use to kinda build races, like that kinda going on. Right now on my website at wrecking air.com,
I have a an email course designed to how to set right raise prices, which I think is important. Sometimes people a lot of people ask, and I don't know how to how to charge people from my race. I don't know what a good race price is. I got a whole email course, which is absolutely free. You can go on there, register, and find out all about that. And We're going into 2017. We've got this is not not quite set in stone yet, but we're about ready to join a network, a podcast network,
And that's pretty cool, but it's kinda great to be part of a podcast family. So look forward to to hearing some more information about that. Of course, we got the emergence of dirt. Race promoters group on Facebook, which is getting some getting a little action. And we got, you know, shout out to Dave out there. Hope he's doing well. That asked us some really great questions. And some of these questions, I hope to turn into either blog posts or podcast in the future that will will definitely
be able to talk about some of the things that are really kind of bugging you. You know, some of the pain points out there for race promoters. Don't I wanna get into that? You know, shout out again to Seisack who
who we interviewed who interviewed me, and, hopefully, in 2017, another thing I plan to add to the show, plan to do some interviews. He just released an article about the interview you did with about Breconer and about all the things we did there. I thought I didn't know if I came off in a certain way in the interview, but he is an excellent writer in reading his his blog post the way I the way I said, and he added these little gifts and little little segments on there kind of added to it. You know, I I I I really I really like the way he wrote that. And it's kind of it's kind of bombastic a little bit because I really kind of, you know, did in my opinion about adventure racing, just kinda went a little off on there. And it was a fantastic interview. Insai is a great guy. So if you get a chance, go to your guys' website at adventureracehub.com.
And I hope 2017 really kinda kinda works. And with that, I'd like to kinda get into today's episode in which we're gonna talk about earning race customers for life. And race customers for life is kind of a difficult thing. When I was a kid, I worked for a bookstore, and it was a really clever name book story. It was called, you guessed it, The Bookstore. I know. Really clever. But it taught me
the fundamentals of customer service. And the customer service where you learn the tenants of the customers always write and that you need to understand
that the customer has needs, you need to meet those needs, and there are certain ways to interact with customers. You don't come up to them and say, can I help you? Because that'll really scare them off. Instead, you could even say things like, hey, have you ever been here before? Let me show you some of the neat things we have in our store. Those are the kind of things that that work in customer service. From there, I went on to work at B Dalton Books. Okay. I'm dating myself here. Right? This is long before Barnes and Noble. Part of Noble used to be the parent company, and no 1 ever heard of. B Dom Books was the local bookstore in the mall. And again, customer service again becomes kind of the thing you have to If you want people to come into your store, you have to be open, willing, you have to have a smile on your face. There's a lot of things you have to do, look presentable,
have a clean store,
have things organized in orderly fashion. And why am I telling you this? Well, because it has a lot to do with today's topic. In which we're gonna talk about something near and dear to a lot of people. Some people call it the evil empire or the entertainment empire, whatever it is. You know, they own Marvel comics, they own Star Wars, they learn all the things you love in geek culture, but we're talking about the Walt Disney Company. The Walt Disney Company is no small fish in the world. When it comes to customer service, Walt Disney Company or just what's called Disney, has this down to a science
and he'll love him or hate him. The Disney company is something you need to pay attention to, and you can learn a lot. And learning is kind of this exactly why the merchandiser podcast is here. We're here to learn something. So let's let's learn let's learn how to earn race customers for life. And to do that, you need to understand that racing is a people business or better yet, a business of managing people's expectations.
People expect you to provide a certain level of performance and service during each 1 of your events. If you're disorganized, indifferent, or god forbid, snobbish. You can form your own expectations about your business very quickly, and you can expect to not have any customers. No customers no business, period. And when I say racing is a people business, what I really mean is that you need to put every effort into finding ways to retain customers because customers are people.
Remember, it's a people business. You must deliberately be focused on creating the most positive experiences you can manage for every customer you come in contact with. So how do you do this? How do you provide a positive experience each time? That sounds hard. Right? Well, it's called the Disney approach, and it goes a little something like this. No. Just kidding. The Walt Disney World and the Disneyland experience is the benchmark
for all customer service practitioners to aspire to. I mean, hopefully, you've been to Disneyland, California side. Right? The West Coast represent? Or you've been to Disney World, East Coast, represent, and learned firsthand what the Disneyland experience is like. What Disney experiences like, what a Disney employee
behaves like at 1 of the resorts. Maybe you've been on a cruise, a Disney cruise, But hopefully, in some way in your world, you understand what Disney's like. It's the land of happiness. It's the land of magic. Everyone is super, super, super nice. Now, pair this with, like, you know, around here, we have something called 6 flags. People are not nice in 6 flags. 6 flags is definitely the anti Disney when it comes to customer service. Sorry. 6 flags, just the way it's just the way it is.
But when you go to Disneyland, everyone is super nice even when they're in a bad mood. So what does this have to do with racing? Well, simple. You don't you have no doubt from the very moment you get out of your car until you return hours later that Disney is in the business of creating happiness for people of all ages, creating this experience is so important to Disney,
that that is their mission statement. They declare on their mission that they will become, quote, 1 of the world's leading producers and providers entertainment. In this statement, Disney sets out to provide a foundation for what kind of company they will be. And what is that? A leading producer and provider of entertainment. It's simple. It's elegant. It's easy to remember. How do your events match up to the Disney experience? Chances are, your races are less like Disney.
And more like Norl and Shred, and you're thinking, Norl and Shred. Where the what kind of medicine do you want, Kyle? Well, neural infrared. Let me These are Let me let me explain this. Right? Okay? So, yes. These are the 2 customer service personas that are far too many race promoters have. So what the heck is their customer service persona? You ask Before you could understand the Disney approach, you need to understand what a bad customer service really looks like.
See, if if this see if this sounds familiar to an event you've been to. It's never outside yourself. Right? We begin with Norl. Noral is an attitude that affects us all. It starts with you and then your staff. It is the perception that all racers are dumb. Interacting with the racers is a burden. And any question a racer ever asks is, oh, huge waste of time. Horver Narel will always blame the staff and ever themselves. Responsibility is not a trait that Narel has.
Narl is not ready to accept responsibility. Narl loves the revenue and the reputation, and then the promoting races provides them. Whatever Narl is fond of saying, If it wasn't for all the dumb razors, this job would be fun. Narrow likes the reward, but not the work. Racing is a people business, and Doral does not appreciate people, except when they've given him money. Or her money.
People to narrow are a means to an end, not a reason for being a business. The indifference created by having a normal behavior infects your staff too. They start becoming annoyed by questions. They develop an attitude of indifference. They have trouble going above and beyond. A staff infected by Nora will have a beer and hang out while watching volunteers pick up trash and clean your venue. And you know who you are when you're talking about that, about that neural attitude, they feel entitled
to be to their breaks since they are the real staff. And those volunteers are well. They're volunteer riffraff. Right? They don't do anything. That's not in their job description. And they do not go out of their way for customers ever. And why should they? Customers create work, and neural is not about doing anything that will require more effort than required. I mean, I'm only getting minimum wage anyway. Right? The customer is always an inconvenience to a normal race.
And for only those beautiful people, we have Shred. Shred is the attitude that we slow people are the worst parts of racing. Shred loves high paced competition, especially when it comes down to 1st and second place, racing neck and neck to the finish line. The drama is a seasoned shred puts on races. Yet, those other racers seem to get in the way of all that drama. Hey. You're blocking my view, slow person.
They're usually too slow, too old, too young to create the right kind of drama. Right? Fred cannot stand those racers, but knows they need to be there for the race if the race is going to make a buck. Right? Poor performing people. To shred their means on end, not a reason for being in business. Shred likes winners. Shred does not put too much stock in women categories and often combines them with limited groups and open classes too. Do you know that shred?
Junior categories? Oh, junior categories, please. It's also an issue verse red. If I expect a kid's race, come on. It's too many junior classes in 1 of these events. Shred doesn't have time for juniors unless the juniors are fast, then Shred is all about the juniors, the up and comers. Nothing like seeing a junior get an early select to a protein or US cycling nationals. Shred is your best friend if you're at that level. Beginner Cat 3 winner? Shred has no time for you.
Maybe if you go up a cat or 2 or start winning, man, they'll talk to you. Trent also likes to tear down an event before everyone is finished. See if this is ever happened to you. If you can save some time by loading the trailer, putting away the pizza, and shutting down the music before they cross the finish line. More power to shred.
Shred is not interested in your feelings about coming in nearly last no matter what overcame what you overcame to even get into the race in the first place, Shred doesn't care. If you're really if you're really not lucky, Shred has already started pulling up the course tape before you're even off the course, Hopefully, shred core sweepers don't take it down in front of you. What they'll do is they'll tailgate you as you try to finish pushing you along.
Those that work for Shred also like to give all the top finishers that love, cowbell, shouts, cheers for the winners, Back of the pack finishers or the last racer cross finish line, Fred's staff are nowhere to be found. They've likely left early says everything was cleaned up long before those people finished. You can point out shred events simply by how they're how you are treated when you come across the finish line.
If there's a finish line there when you arrive, customers aren't afterthought to shred in oral. So there has to be a better way. Doesn't there? Does that sound like 2 personalities, 2 personas that you've raced with, that you've been to races with, that you've experienced, worse and worse. Does that sound like your attitude when you're dealing with customers? Does that sound the kind of races you put on?
I mean, yeah. Narrow and treasure examples of bad customer service. And, yeah, it's a little bombastic. That's my that's my word of the day, I guess. It's bombastic. It's absurd to think that people think this way. How many reasons you've been to were Man, that's pretty dang close to the truth. I know. God hurts. Right? And 1 could care less about your repeat business. And the other could care less about your accomplishment.
1 noticeably repels customers or the other, repels them as a consequence, both attitudes will ruin you. So why did they exist? This is a very good question. Lack of caring might be 1 reason. Well, another is just poor leadership. But the press reason for gnarling tried to exist is that most race promoters don't know how to stop them from appearing.
They're not equipped in the way of changing their customer service direction towards a system that works. No 1 ever taught them, a customer's for a strategy beyond the customer's always right. And even that is not correct. You wanna know why that's not correct? Because the customer isn't always right. Sometimes the customer's very wrong. Incredibly wrong. Because we're seldomly right, but here's the catch. It's your job to make them feel like they're right. See the difference? 1 is capitulation.
The other is strategic. Is rolling over and give me customer whatever they want. When they throw a fit, the other is a pre planned way to deal with fit throwing customers. That everyone in your company is prepared for, and it already has the power to deal with. That sounds kind of Good. Right? It's that power that belongs inside something called a customer service. Strategy. There we go, Kyle. Strategy again, man. Quit killing me with this strategy.
You gotta learn it. You can't avoid this stuff. You have to learn this stuff. So let's learn it. Okay? It is your plan. Strategy is your plan. How do you treat customers? Teach your staff how to treat customers and deal with the customer actions before they happen. Now, wouldn't that be novel? Rather than reacting, already be prepared. And how you do that? This is what is known as the Disney approach. It is an example of customer service strategy
that has 50 years of proof to back it up. You can't argue with 50 years of dealing with every kind of customer of the Sun. You imagine the kind of people that walk through Disneyland? You imagine I mean, just watch, you know, just watch any reality TV. I mean, the lowest common hour TV. Those are Disney's customers daily, sometimes hourly. That's why the Disney approach is a perfect example for you to model your own customers of a strategy after,
you're not going to become a Disney. That's very unrealistic. But you can emulate Disney's approach by realigning your business to help you also retain customers for life. You're thinking for life? Yeah. For life. Does that sound too difficult to do? It shouldn't. Remember, Disney's been doing this for 50 years. Some of you are even 50 years old. They've been doing it longer than you've been alive. However, did the customer service attitude of gnarled or shred sound farfetched as well?
Yeah. They kinda did, but I know some of you have had a gnarled or shred and maybe even both experience at a race. Snarky people at registration? I mean, how many times the people have that? My hands raised many times. Mister Murphy Lowe's, snarky people, hydration. Hey. Can you tell me where yeah. It's over there. Did you forget to sign a waiver? Can't give me your waiver. Don't send your waiver.
Yeah. Can that be done differently? Oh, you bet it can. Race director has no time for your question. Hey. Excuse me. Can we pre ride the course? Why do you ask me? Go ask and volunteer. Yeah. Snappy. Snappy. Right? Or maybe it was a starting line full of people. I'm like, how about doing it in there? Yeah. Whoo. But when you cross finish line, it's crickets. DRIP, DRIP, DRIP, DRIP, Tables are gone. Pizza's gone. Music's off. You're like, where is everybody? Like, oh, congratulations.
Here's your cup. Oh, where is it be? Oh, yeah. Oh, when you took forever. I'm sorry. I once crossed the finish line in an adventure race, Were the only people left in the park were my family, the chief timer, and the race director. Everything and everyone else was gone including all the other razors. And, of course, the pizza. You know what I mean? I love the pizza. But that's what I'm saying. That's the kind of bad experience I would like to help you avoid. And help your customers avoid.
Dedicating yourself to your business to helping your customers experience the best side of customer service is achievable. Disney's been doing it for 50 years. I'm gonna say this over and over and over again. 50 years. Disney continues to do this every day. Hopefully, After you listen to this, maybe you come back, let's do it again. You'll know how to do this too. So you're probably probably asking, like, are you ready to learn how to retain customers for life?
Then let's start helping your customers by first changing your customer service strategy. By maybe even creating your first customer service strategy, maybe your first strategy ever. The Disney approach was not created overnight. So give yourself some time to take all this in.
You will first need to understand what goes into a customer service strategy. Then Once you know the pieces, you can start working on what parts of your racing business need to change before the others. Your strategy does not need to address everything cost related. But it should focus on at least these 7 key elements. 1, be guest focus, not customer focus. 2, Set team expectations. 3, teach team behaviors. 4, empower your team to go above beyond. 5, everyone collects feedback.
6, setting is important, and 7, there are no menial jobs. Sorry, you're ready? Are you ready to learn the Disney approach? To make better racing, then let's get to it. Number 1, be guest focused, not customer focused. Disney does not call customers customers. They call them guests. If you think about it, calling your customer's guests completely changes the relationship you have with them. Customers are people that share a transaction with you. Then go away.
There is no connection to you in your business. Customers are rather lifeless entities that consume your service. And then when they're full, move on to consume someone else. A guest, on the other hand, is a respected visitor. That sounds kinda neat. Guess is a symbolic of someone you invited to your race just as you would invite them to your home for dinner. A guest is not a casual encounter. It's an intimate connection between you, your event, and their experience.
If you start to think of customers as the guest, your entire customer service point of view changes drastically You might not do anything for a customer, but you would do anything for a guest in your home. A guest is someone you would treat like family. Would you pack up everything before the family had come across the finish line? No, you would not. Treat your lace, like your house, and your customers like guests in your house.
So for here amount, we're gonna use the term guests instead of customers. Number 2, set team expectations. You are responsible for creating a unified vision of your racing company This vision needs to contain a clear message that's communicated every treating you gives to your staff and volunteers. You do give training to your staff monitors. Right?
If you remember from before, Disney declares their mission that they will become 1 of the world's leading producers and provider provider's entertainment. How do they do this? Disney use something they call the Disney way. They find out how to please their guests by doing research on them, finding out who they are, and then acting on that research.
You don't think the Disney collects data on you? Well, I guess, again, Disney's collecting data on you every ride you go on, every hotel you stay in, every cruise you take. If re email you respond to, they know you probably better than you know yourself sometimes when it comes to entertainment. But I digress. They find out how to please their guests by doing research on them. And Disney combines this research the guest preferences and expertise to assure that the company fulfills its mission.
How does this work for your race? It doesn't take much research to understand what your guests want. At a minimum, guess, once the staff involved here's to be friendly, they wanna be approachable, they wanna be helpful, not snarky, They want this without any of that con condescending or mechanical type behavior. Yeah. Whatever. This is achieved through training and not just any kind of training. This is expectation
training. You need to sit down with your staff You can sit down and explain to them how being friendly, approachable, and helpful to your guest helps the business. Furthermore, You need to make sure your volunteers are on board with the same message. This often requires a volunteer coordinator that greets, that vets, that supervises volunteers. The goal is getting everyone working for you to understand why this new behavior is important.
This is the foundation to team behavior towards your guests. They have to know why before they can learn the how. But you have to teach them the why. You have to make them understand that being friendly and approachable, helpful supports the bottom line, the bottom line supports the profit, supports the race being successful and more people showing up, making sure you can pay them more or get them more benefits Can't do that when they're all snarky.
Number 3, teach team behaviors. When your team knows why you need them to be friendly and approachable and helpful towards your guests, You need to help them learn how. The how is more involved, but achievable when everyone knows why they are doing it, the goal is to teach everyone a set of behaviors, mannerisms, terms, and values that are specific to his or her job function. It is what some might call the cheat sheet.
It's how you greet and thank guests, how you act in front of them at all times, how you answer questions when asked. It's centered around your service standards. And what if you don't have service standards? Do you have service standards? Probably not. But you might? No worries. Here are 4 sort of standards that embrace the core elements found in the Disney way. First one's pretty easy. Safety. Do no harm. Get rid of the the things in the way.
Make passageways between registration and the the starting line. Out of the nose, the breeze out of the way, got rid of the board of the nails in it.courtesy, always being friendly. This is these are this seems simple, but, you know, Darla and Shred live all over the racing community. Third, show always be presenting. That means like, you know, everyone's wearing the same shirts or everyone's wearing clean shirts.
You know, people aren't cusser swearing. You're not playing music with swear words in it. Efficiency. Doing it well. Everyone knows their job, everyone knows the other person's job. There's a process. These are just 4 Simple service standards that you can embrace. These core service standards become the model that each team member can use to guide any situation. They may seem like common sense, but trust me, they are not if you have never communicated them to your staff.
These service standards are core values for your business. They will allow you to judge your staff's performance during each of your events. If you tell them a safety courtesy show, And efficiency are your core standards, and then they go and break them Now you have something to base performance on or better yet. They go both and beyond in these ones. You have performance standards to do promotions and give awards to as well. You have to lead from the front on these standards.
Part of teaching your staff these behaviors is exhibiting them yourself as a race projector, as a race promoter, and real reason in race director, are you encompassing safety and courtesy? Are you always the showman or showwoman? Are you always dealing with efficiency?
Your staff follows you by acting upon these new standards. You should immediately reward their excellence However, the Disney way is not for everyone, asking your staff to change your behavior to match your service standard may not work for some of your members of your team. If changing behavior of a team member is too much for the process, then make sure their dismissal is quick and decisive. And that might be tough.
I mean, do not let this become a distraction obstacle by getting the whole team to change their behavior. But sometimes, you just have to make the decision that if someone will not support a customer service behavior, or your customer service strategy, you gotta let them go. It's, you know, you they they gotta get on board or you gotta let them go. Tough. It's tough stuff. Strategy's tough. And decisions based upon strategies are tough. But you will now if you if you if you embrace
These Disney way core values, now you have something to base stuff on. You don't inspire them because you don't like them. Or they look weird or they act funny? You can't reward them because you're your buddies, because you think you got some extra bucks and we. Now, now you have something to base it on. That's fair. Equity. People acting the same way to a core value and based upon the mission of your company.
All following that, that's grounds for reward. If they're all totally just ignoring it completely, it's grounds for dismissal. That's how you justify these things. This is what's called becoming a mature company. So number 4, empower your team to go above Beyond. You need to empower your team to solve problems. What do you mean by empower?
You need to be able to to read into guest questions and go above and beyond answering them. However, you if they cannot act, the drum of your staff, you can't act without your whole approval, then you will never be able to give your guest the best service you can deliver. You need to provide your team with that understanding of what they can and cannot do for a guest. That's empowerment. You don't have to be there every 5 seconds. You're not a babysitter.
You need to provide your team with understanding of what they can and cannot do for a guest. You need you also need to avoid combustion points by controlling areas that your team and guests will come into communication with each other. You might be thinking combustion points. That sounds that's a strange word. But these are the points that usually cause guessing it frustrated with staff due to no fall to the staff.
Sometimes this means having a staff member empowering to make decisions, at specific areas to drive guest flow. What's something that's a combustion point, long lines. Long lines are automatically a combustion point. Imagine Disney long lines. People get called bananas, long lines of Disney. They put staff members there. They have Express Line lanes. They open a new lane. Walmart does this too.
We're providing the service attention for those guests having problems. You're spotting people who look confused who aren't sure where they're gonna go. These are people that will come to the front of the line ask a question in the middle of you helping another guest. Easy to stop this. Put someone right there to help counteract these combustion points. Another example is empowering your staff to give refunds without your approval.
Refunds are perfect combustion point that most registrations registration staff have trouble solving without approval. We give them the capability to do specific guest focused task without needing your approval each and every time. This is the this is the key of empowerment, is allowing them to take care of problems without your require without your need to be there. You already preapprove
them to do these things. And then of course, you can also preapprove them to do things that when they actually get to a point or do they need you, they know when to ask for you. So you're not being bothered every single day by tiny little things. Like, where's the bathroom? Where's the start line? Is this the right bike? Is this the right shoe? Am I allowed to wear headphones? Kinda wear these sunglasses? Can I go without a shirt?
All these kind of things. Do I have to sign a waiver? What if my kid's 17 and a half? What if his birthday is tomorrow? I didn't bring any money. All these things. Your race sucks. I hate you all my money back. In that case, give them their money back. I love your race. It's awesome. Could you play double? Yeah. Not gonna happen. Anyway, empowerment is key. Empowerment is key.
Because you need to give your employees the ability to take care of problems before they become problems. It's so simple. That's the Disney way. Number 5, everyone collects feedback.
Permission to go above and beyond also includes collecting feedback. If you think about it, your staff has far more interactions even guests than you do. Use them to collect information on how everyone is doing during an event. Your entire staff should be attempting to determine the feelings and attitudes of all your guests at all times. They should also be checking in with you at specific times to give you updates. Imagine that on how your guests are doing. I mean, think about it.
You could be getting valuable customer of information and customer data by simply having your staff and your volunteer asking people, how are you doing? How are you enjoying the race? What do you what do you like best about it? Hearing their stories. Hearing them interact. People wanna tell their stories. People wanna tell you about their their their problems. People wanna tell you about their experiences, but they've enjoyed.
And then people could be going to you and telling you what they think is going on. Hey, hey, boss. I just talked to 10 people. Hey, you really like what's going on. They really like that thing you put in in that course. This is an important step in collecting feedback. It's normally found in surveys, testimonies and reviews. Get this feedback live as it happens.
But also think about collecting this feedback after the fact too. You gotta do that as well. Face to face feedback is going to be important in judging what is and what is not working during your race. However, guests will need some time to process their experience. Sometimes they didn't what they didn't like might have been overlooked at the moment they experience something great. After a week or 2, they might remember that parking was difficult or that your registration process is confusing.
Give them some time to adjust. After that, after their time with you and your event, and then reach out to them. You know, a combination of Mailchimp and SurveyMonkey are a perfect example for this. Building a simple survey and SurveyMonkey and then using Mailchimp campaign to send it out to all your guests because they gave you your email. Right? Hopefully, they gave me they gave you your their email.
You should be collecting that. You can help the get to know your guests better by getting this information. I mean, they're not all gonna respond. That's fine. But some of them will. You can give them a chance, like, a raffle prize. You can give them, like, a discounted coupon from the next, you know, from the next race. It's a great way to get them to fill it out as well. Most surveys get filled out higher percentages when there's something in it for them.
You can also invite your guests to participate in a phone survey and provide comments via the social media. If feedback posts on Facebook can generate a significant amount of qualitative responses that you never expected, feedback gives you insight into how you and your staff really did during the event because now that you're not looking at the real people, your guest feedback is vital to knowing which of your efforts are working correctly and which are broken
more so with the things that are broken because it gives you some idea on how well you're doing beyond the quantitative data of numbers. Guests base their decision to return on how they felt about their experience, not whether or not they won their race. You owe it to your business to find out what those feelings are, and how you can go about improving them. And something that's very important to customer service is that someone who had a pleasant experience will tell,
what, 5 or 10 of the friends. Someone had a horrible experience will tell, like, 20 or 30 or 40 they will tell as many people that'll listen. So you wanna nip this in the bud quickly. You wanna find out who is complaining and also give the opportunity to get praise back from people who early enjoyed because they might not tell you either. May have a great time, walk away, and be totally quiet. This is how you do that. Number 6. Setting is important.
Your setting is wherever your guests meet you. In racing, we call this the venue. Your setting is often the first impression your guests have of you, your staff, your race, and your company. This is why it's important to be aware of your setting at all times. If you think about your experience you've had at Disney, they're setting shout to Disney at all times. Disney uses the same building materials for all their walkways.
They have their logo on everything they sell. Their staff wears easily recognizable forms. The list goes on and on and on. All Disney settings speaks to their guests and constantly communicates what is included in Disney setting. And what is out of place? Does your race do that? What kind of sitting are you presenting to your guess?
Your setting should always support the show that you are creating for your guests from the pop up tents and tables and registration to your crew work shirts, bib numbers, and timing result printouts. If you think about that, the printouts, How about the results online? We can download the pronouncing.
If setting also must consider all the senses of each guest, This goes back to teaching your staff to always be demonstrating their service standards. Guest should not be hearing you and your your staff cursing. Nor should you be playing music that includes offensive language. And I'm guilty of that. Yes. Apparently, I had DMX on my on my rotation when I was playing in a win race. And, yes, that did not work out well.
And I had a you know what? I've had a customer tell me. So I got some feedback. And what did I do? I took it out of the rotation. I I changed the music up. I started going through being very clear about what music was being played. Your staff should not look like they were just released from a Supramax prison.
Where should they be wearing suits in the outdoor race, you know, unless that's your thing, which I hope it's not. I hope it's not. Summertime and a suit just don't mix. But things like garbage. Garbage should be easy to find, but should not be overflowing with trash. You don't have a trash can or a bag just dumped out on the garbage. The water area, the drink area, usually the biggest culprit in this. It should not be stinking of the place.
If you're trying to be guest focused, you should be aware of your setting enough to know that garbage cans need emptying. Every 1 of your staff should be looking and acting at all times, in your setting without being told to do so. This should be 1st and last line of defense in keeping your setting ideal for guests. However, the only way you can possibly know this is if you tell them and give them the power to deal with it when it comes up. And setting is very important.
It comes to almost the unification of the staff. You know who a staff member is and who not who's not a staff member. You know who the race director is and who's not the race director. You know who a volunteer is and who is not a volunteer, and you know who a racer is and who's not a racer. Everyone has a role play. But in setting, sometimes this can be very simple. Some drop cloths, some simple logos, simple polo shirts, same color pop up tents.
Same use of the of of race tape or boundary ribbons or the color of your of your temporary fences or the color of your post. Things that make you unified in your setting, but they know who's who. And then take this cleaning thing, please click clean. Keep a place clean. You won't go into a store that's trashed, will you? Stuff laying out of the place. You won't go there. Same thing with a race. Keep your BIP numbers aligned. Keep your paperwork aligned.
It's wind blowing. Make sure things aren't flying away. Keep all your your food cleaned up. You got bugs and stuff. Now you're gonna find a different way. You got things you're gonna find containers of lids, etcetera, etcetera. And this is your setting. Make your razors feel, like, yes. I mean, this is just keep hammering this through all the way through. Right? Okay? It's the last 1. Number 7. There are no menial jobs.
All the jobs you have your staff doing must tie back to your overall mission. This means that a job that does not tie back to the mission should not be something your staff is doing This being said, your staff needs to be fully aware of how their job does tie back to your company's mission. This is an important part of teaching them how to become guest focused. If you know how their job connects,
And if they know how their job connects to the oral goals injected with the company, they will feel like their work matters, and you will know that they are working towards the best best best efforts of your company. If they feel their work matters, they'll be more likely to embrace your service standards. Make your staff matter by making their jobs matter to the mission of the company. Here's an example.
This is Rechiniere's mission. Rechiniere will weave idle outdoor racing knowledge. Into actionable business strategies by developing and delivering an educational content required to build and run a successful outdoor racing business. Same pretty straightforward. Right? Probably need some work, a little wordy. That's okay. We're somewhat up with with the call to action with this and with our tagline, build better races.
Yeah. Pretty simple. Right? And we wanna help you build better races. That's, you know, we're talking about outro knowledge, actionable knowledge, strategies, educational content, successful outdoor racing businesses. Build better races. Pretty simple. This mission requires us to keep focusing on building your racing knowledge into actionable business strategies. It does not direct us to start building better cake recipes. So if I had a writer on my staff writing epic cake recipes, then
we'd have created a menial job simply by acknowledging that cake purposes do not fit into our mission. The same is true with your race promotion. If you have a staff member, raking pine cones, in a place no guests will ever go, then how does that fit into your mission? If it's a setting issue and the pine cones make the venue look bad, then maybe that is required. But if it just bugs you and you want someone to remove it from your side, is that a job tied to your mission? Probably not.
Maybe that's not a good example. But you know what the kind of things I'm talking about. You need to seriously think through each job and have your staff involved your staff and volunteer are doing. Doing a job just to give someone something to do is not supporting your mission either. If you have a bunch of volunteers and not enough jobs volunteers, Tell some of them to go become spectators. We don't need you. You don't have to be mean about it.
But you don't have to just take a bunch of volunteers if you don't need them. Same with staff. If you're paying somebody and you have nothing for the do, why do you hire them? Doing a job just to give someone something to do is not supporting your mission. Remember, they have to know
how their job tie back the mission. Otherwise, they'll never support your service standards the way you need them to. You need to make yourself stop creating idle positions that create poor staff attitudes towards the guest, or dysfunctional services, start creating epic positions that tie into your service make the person in the position matter to the company and watch how they become friendly approachable and helpful to your guess. Really that simple. So this is the Disney Way.
And embracing the Disney Way is your final weave of these 7 elements into your guest service strategy. It'll be the new benchmark for how your business works. You must first believe that your customers Sorry. I used the word, didn't I? Yes. You must first believe that your guess experience matter. There you go. It's hard. See, it's even hard for me. If you dedicate yourself and your business to helping your guests have the best experience possible, you'll create more than a loyal customer.
You create something called a fan. Imagine that. You're thinking, what a fan? What's a fan? Racing? Yeah. Fans are super guests. I think your way of treating them is superior to all others. The benefit of fandom is their ability and willing to share their your events. On social media. They'll tell all of their friends about your races over and over again. They'll bring more people to your events than any marketing department could ever do for you.
I think even and Seth Godin even called these people sneezers. These are people are constantly I'll tell you. I'll tell you. I'll tell you. Fans are those customers that you've retained for life simply by changing the way you treat people will be will reward your business with their attendance, their money, and most of hope, their love. This is what fan. Fan is short for fanatic.
Their fanatics for your business, fanatics for your products, fanatics for your events, fanatics for your service, and your way you do things, your process, your systems, Is that worth doing it the Disney way? Absolutely. At least in my opinion, how do you feel about it? I mean, the goal of your strategy is to take your next customers
and treat them like valued guests and then turn them into lifelong fans. Do whatever it takes to make the process come true, and you will never have a problem selling your race again. It's really that simple. It's really the the crux of the racing strategy of making customers fans for life. And that's just using these 7 keys, these 7, the Disney Way keys of being guest focused. Not customer focus. Setting your team expectations. Teach them the behaviors. Empower them
to go above and beyond. Have everyone collecting the feedback? Make sure your setting isn't isn't treated the same way as you're treating your guests and make sure that there is no menial jobs. And you have created the Disney Way. And now you know. In this week's coffee for closers, I wanna talk about adventure addicts racing, but in particular because they have a race coming up. So this is very timely. Now, if you've never heard of adventure addicts racing, those fan in 2011
by friends and former teammates, Michelle Fosher and Andy Bacon. And Michelle, I apologize. I got your name wrong. But I mean, that's how I'm gonna pronounce it right now. Anyway, because they loved adventure racing, and they wanted to help grow the sport. That's how they could they created adventure addicts racing. Well, Andy has since moved on, and they're the company kind of, like, disappeared for a little bit. But then Michelle, she she got it restarted. And AAR has a a new partner,
a new partner with her is is Liz Notter. And if you don't know who who Michelle Fasha and Liv Natar are. Let me tell you a little bit about them. Michelle is a world class event eraser. I mean, she's done Primal Quest. She got Primal Quest under a bit under belt. At least a 100 maybe maybe more, maybe less. But at least a 100 expert expedition level of entry race wins
to her name, and she the big, big member of team halfway there. And Liz, on the other hand, is 1 of the few American mountain bike orienteering athletes who have ever competed in the World mountain bike orienteering championships overseas. She is an elite mountain bike or in hearing champion. And these 2 are now running a venture at x-ray and they're at of inter at X Racing on Twitter. And it's a small company. So and now recently restructured it'd be a nonprofit business.
But they put tremendous amount of care in each 1 of their events. Many love adventure. They love to race. They love the outdoors, and they are addicted to it. And they put it in the name. But the question now is, are you? Have you always wanted to ride a bike, truck through amazing terrain, paddle down the river? Learn to read a map. You just don't know where to start. Well, Michelle and Liz have
a special event for you. If you're a veteran, or even if you're a beginner, if you remember from from last week's episode, episode 11, talking about beginner races and beginner venture races were to start. If you're an venture racer around the Washington DC metro area, and we're talking Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, or even North Carolina, but this race. Some folks even as far away as Tennessee and New York have shown up to to these events. Then
The venture racing adventure addicts racing has a race for you. They're holding the 3rd annual winter adventure race called the chill on January 14 2017. And it'll be at Little Bennett Regional Park in Montgomery County, Maryland. That's that's somewhere near Germantown, Maryland, if you're looking on the map. At Little Bennett Regional Park, great place, big, swathsoland, lots of great trails.
And the race is gonna feature a 3 hour and a 6 hour course. It's full of trekking, mountain biking, and navigation with miles of trails, fire roads, and forests that have the perfect place for the winter escape. If you're lucky, you might even might even you might even snow a little bit. It's kinda getting that cold. I know in West Virginia this weekend, it's already snowing up in the mountains. But a full snowshoeing
might be in play. I don't know. But according to Michelle and Liz, that that snowshoeing part is definitely optional. But don't let the winter blues get you down. Join Michelle Liz and all sorts of interest racers out for the chill of interest rates on January 14 2017. Registration is still open. But it's only open till January 8th. So you need to go to adventure addictsracing.com so that you can be a 100%, you know, addiction guaranteed
to get into this race and enjoy it. And why do I think this is great for beginners? Because there's no canoeing. So, yeah, it's gonna be cold. So you're gonna bundle up. Right? But 3 hours, 6 hour course, it's got this perfect to learn some navigation. Navigation isn't super hard. Lots of fire roads and big force trails. So, you know, navigating your way through this and learning some of the basics.
Are all here. The trekking, mountain biking, navigation are perfect places to learn, and the park is big, but not super big. So it's an excellent adventure race to cut your teeth on. So again, registration's open till January 8th atadventureadixracing.com. Mean, commit to getting outside in this new year and get your team together. And if you need another reason to register, then think about their tagline, a venture cheaper than therapy.
Yeah. He had to have the truth. I raised this 1 last year up by team Douglass, and it was very cold. I think there was even some stream crossings, man crossing cold water. No. I'm not a big fan of that. Right? But it's a fun, super fun race. It's it's it's quick. It's so quick. It's By the time you get done, it's like, I'm not really cold anymore, plus the party afterwards. Michelle Liz, adventure addict, racing, and I'll probably talk to this about future past interpreacher podcast.
They are known for their post race parties. Got meat, spaghetti, non meat, spaghetti, Oh my gosh. It's just you you go do do a 3 or 6 hour venture race. Come in. Put the the warm they got a warm shelter. Eating the food, hanging out with your Venturace buddies, and talking about all the things you did. It's fantastic. So hope to see you there on Jan hope to see you there on January 14th.
It's a perfect way to bring in the new year. Again, January 8th are cutting off registration. So go to venture atticsracing.com. Thank you so much for listening to the merchandiser podcast. And for helping this show, make it to episode 12. This is our last episode of 2016. But I'll be back on 2017 with episode number 13. And what's a lucky number 13 episode? If not, 1 dedicated to our cohost, Mister Murphy.
But lucky number 13 will not be our only miss Murphy episode. In fact, episode number 13, do the error on January 10th 20 team will be our first of 4 cautionary tales dedicated to topics Mister Murphy wants to talk about. Just to tease you a little bit since Mister Murphy Loeb's surprises. We're going to get into risk management, disaster recovery,
and how to bounce back when everything goes wrong. Because when you're dealing with Mister Murphy, anything can go wrong and most likely will go wrong. But no worries, that's not for another year. Until then, if you have any questions or comments, reach out to me on Twitter at merchantsdirect.com.
And when I'm out for the next 2 weeks, I'll still be checking into Twitter. So if you send me a tweet, I'm starting to read it. And usually I reply back. So if you if you have a question or a comment, shoot me out on Twitter. That's usually how how you're gonna find me. If you wanna subscribe and make sure you never miss an episode, mergersadirt.com
is how you do it. 1 click gets you every single episode for free. And if you're in you got an Android or an iPhone, whatever you got for Christmas, whoever you get your podcast, 1 click and you get it all. And thank you for helping me build this merchandising community and for telling your friends how they can build better races too. I'll see you in 2 weeks. For our first episode of season 2 of The Merchandise Podcast, Lucky Number 13.
Happy New Year to 1 and all, and thank you again for listening. And now Carol Lavelle's rock 1 last time. Enjoy.