I’ve been reading a great book: Creating Magic by Lee Cockerell – the guy who turned Disney’s Magic Kingdom into an operationally excellent delight machine.
He writes about something they call Take 5s, and it reminded me of something your crews could do here in the next couple weeks to create delight. Cockerell writes (I added the emphasis):
Take 5s are more spontaneous.
The Cast has been trained to seize opportunities to do something special for Guests: replace a spilled ice cream for free; walk an older person to the restroom; ask a little girl dressed like Cinderella for her autograph; tell a family something interesting about the park, like why there are special window displays on Main Street.
Sometimes these moments are especially heartwarming, like the time a woman asked Mickey Mouse for an autograph to bring home to a little boy who was seriously ill. Mickey didn’t just sign his name; he wrote a long personal letter in the child’s autograph book.
Why are these individualized interactions called Take 5s? Because they blow the Guests’ minds in less than five minutes.
Think of them as real-life versions of those random acts of kindness you read about on bumper stickers.
At Disney they only seem random; the Cast Members are not only trained to look for Take 5 opportunities, but held accountable for making them happen.
Most Take 5s take closer to five seconds than five minutes, and from a business standpoint I can’t imagine a better use of time.
All those seconds and minutes repeated thousands of times a day add up to better customer relations than you could buy with a big corporate PR budget.
A letter I once received from a mother expressed it best. “I was looking for magic in all the wrong places,” she said. “Your staff is your magic.” You might be thinking, “It’s easy for people at Disney World to do Take 5s and Magical Moments, but that kind of thing would never work in my business.”
Really? Think about the variety of human interactions that take place within your organization and between your employees and the outside world. Aren’t there opportunities to make people feel a little more special? By teaching, coaching, and encouraging your employees to look for and seize these opportunities, you too can create extraordinary magic in your business.
We just emailed one such idea out to our home services clients. It’s something their techs can be mindful of in the next few weeks.
You can most certainly hold a brainstorming session to come up with a list of such opportunities. That will get your staff to start thinking about being mindful of looking out for other opportunities.
Every time someone performs a Take5, celebrate it back at the shop! And keep a list of what’s been done.
You’ll be building the Training Manual of Awesome for your company.
Great post! I can’t wait to get my hands on this book! However, it makes me stop and reflect on WHY it is that so much work has to be done to TRAIN people in how to look for the good things to do for other people. Don’t get me wrong, I am very glad that Disney does this training…and shows (if you have ever been to any of their properties). But wouldn’t this world be an amazing place, if those “amazing experiences” didn’t stop at the gates of Disney? 5 seconds at a time…what a great investment, in each other!
(Nodding.) (A lot.)