university of service excellence | WhaleTales Blog by Chris von Ulmenstein

After sitting through a 2-hour Service Excellence workshop to turn South Africans into service ambassadors for South Africa during the World Cup, run by Be and Jeff from the Disney Institute of Orlando at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) in Cape Town on Friday, I could not help but be disappointed relative to the high expectations the invitation to attend the workshop had created.

First, an invitation to attend a Disney-run service excellence workshop is not to be sneezed at, especially if attendance is free, and there was no restriction on attendance numbers from a particular company. The target audience was frontline staff of the South African Police, Department of Transport, Department of Home Affairs, Tourism Business Council, South African Revenue Services, the Retail Association of South Africa, the Banking Association of South Africa, airlines, hotels (we are sure that they meant guest houses and other forms of accommodation too!), and restaurants.

The Auditorium of the CTICC holds an audience of 1000 – no more than 100 front-line staff attended the Friday afternoon session – the morning session had been attended by about 700 persons, the organisers estimated. The previous day the sessions had been held at a church in Goodwood- this was the sum total of the workshops for Cape Town’s hospitality, tourism and general service front-line staff. A Friday afternoon, and a rainy one at that, probably is a bad day for attendance in Cape Town, and parking anywhere near the CTICC was impossible to find, given the Good Food & Wine Show, which had dominated the CTICC, especially given its star attraction Gordon Ramsay.

Having obtained parking, we sat in the massive auditorium, and the two Disney staffers tried a number of participative techniques to get some life and energy into our audience, including blowing a vuvuzela. I have been to Orlando, and attended a Relationship Marketing Conference at Walt Disney World a good 15 years ago – I loved every minute of the Disney Magic, and I know that the Disney Institute is regarded as the ‘University of Service Excellence’.

All the more the disappointment of the lightweight presentation by our two Disney “cast members” – all staffers are on show, and therefore they have this designation. Leaving the presentation, I could not help but think that this was the cleverest way in which Disney could have marketed its Walt Disney World (and related parks in California, Paris, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and soon to open Shanghai), and be paid for the pleasure of it! A gi-normous Disneyworld park (biggest employer in USA with 60 000 employees in Orlando alone), could in no way compare to our little tourism and hospitality businesses in South Africa, excitedly facing the event of a lifetime, the World Cup.

We were shown videos and photographs of Walt Disney World, and interviews with South Africans working at the park, all eschewing the Disney mantra of smile, smile and smile! The presentation was mainly focused on Disneyworld, and once in a while the presenters seemed to remember that they were in South Africa, and that they had to adapt their material to our big event.

The presentation in essence covered the following:

1. Setting a vision – we know what it is for Disney (to be universally recognised as the most admired company in the world). For World Cup South Africa it was defined as follows: “Deliver a pleasant and unforgettable service experience for the world visitors during the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa and beyond”.

2. Defining a “common purpose” – at Disney this is for all ‘cast members’ to pick up the garbage and to give directions to their guests (not “customers”) with two fingers (not just one) or the whole hand. For World Cup South Africa this was defined as follows: “Just now to WOW all customers“. This mantra was repeated over and over again. The “just now” introduction was a “South Africanisation” of the Common Purpose, supposedly reflecting how we speak (I’ll do it ‘just now’), badly reflecting service excellence, in that one would do something for the customer “immediately”, and not “just now”!

3. “Guestology”, a Disney term for getting to know one’s customers in terms of where they come from, who they are, how large their party is, the length of their stay, and what their needs, wants and expectations are. The presenters presented the audience with the profile of the typical World Cup soccer fan : travelling in groups of eight persons, predominantly males, 25 – 45 years old, wanting to experience things in-between the matches.

Key service excellence tips presented throughout the presentation were the following:

1. Company leaders must share the company vision with their staff – this rarely happens

2. The bottom-line will reflect good service excellence, but should never be the end-goal

3. Everyone in the company is responsible for excellent customer service

4. Customer service is not a department, it is an attitude

5. Customer service is not only provided to customers, but should also be provided to colleagues

6. The staff’s interaction with customers creates “magical moments” but can also cause “tragical moments”.

7. “Treat every customer as if they sign your paycheck… because they do”

8. Service must evoke emotion and drive repeat business

9. Put a smile in one’s voice.

10. Surprise and delight one’s guests

11. Sometimes the guests are wrong, or cannot be served in the way they desire – say “NO”, but offer them an attractive alternative

12. “I may not have the answer, but I’ll find it. I may not have the time, but I’ll make it.”

13. Make eye-contact and smile, smile smile…

14. It all starts with respect

The bottomline: a most disappointing presentation, given the calibre of the Disney Institute. It lacked the WOW it was meant to instill in us as front-line staff meeting soccer fans in 25 days from now. It did not teach us anything new in how we deal with our guests. It was a monumental fail, given that the Department of Tourism is said to have spent R 9,5 million on putting an estimated 250 000 (the number is questioned, given the poor response in Cape Town, perhaps only 10 % of this number) attendees through 75 two-hour workshops in all the Host Cities and related areas. The Department of Tourism’s 3-page evaluation questionnaire we received on arrival was poorly typed, in that the rating scale from 1 – 5 was not aligned to match the written descriptions of the scale in numerous places. It asked us to rate a “facilitator”, but we had two, and they had very different personalities, meaning that they could have been rated very differently. The structured questions were not all suited to the answer options provided. Certain questions were in grey panels, making them unreadable, an irony as the service excellence Disney had been preaching to us for two hours was not reflected in this poorly drafted questionnaire, which was meant to evaluate the Disney performance! A pleasant surprise was that we did not have to pay for the very expensive CTICC parking!

We all left with a “Certificate of Successful Completion (of) the The Disney Approach to Service Excellence, World Cup and Beyond”. We also received a business card with 3 “Service Guidelines & Behaviours”, to carry with us at all times:

“. I present a positive attitude at all times

. I am considerate and respectful to ALL customers

. I go over and above in my position”

To see the objectives of and motivation for the Department of Tourism’s Tourism Service Excellence Initiative (the poor Disney presenters just could not get their tongues around the name of the Initiative) Service Excellence workshops, read here.

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com

The Department of Tourism has announced a last minute service excellence campaign “Tourism Service Excellence Initiative” (TSEI) for all front-line staff dealing with soccer fans during the World Cup, less than one month prior to the start of this world sport event. While its intentions are extremely noble, and it will be offered for free, a two-hour session will hardly make any difference to generally poor service attitudes in Cape Town and South Africa.

The Department of Tourism has contracted The Disney Institute from Orlando to conduct a number of free two-hour seminars around the country, the Cape Town ones taking place next Thursday (at His People Center in Goodwood) and Friday (at the Cape Town International Convention Centre), at 10h00 and 14h00 on each of these days. The same presentations will be held in Stellenbosch on 15 May, in George on 17 May, and in Knysna on 18 May.

The Disney Institute is a highly regarded “university of service excellence”, and a company like Pick ‘n Pay has regularly sent its managers to Orlando to improve its stores’ customer care and service excellence. But it is impossible to change a service mentality in 2 hours!

The Western Cape province sent the invitation to attend the seminars in Cape Town as a Press Release, and it states that one can call to make a booking (a friendly and reasonably efficient process requiring ID numbers of staff, and more) or go the TSEI website www.tsei.co.za. Dr Laurine Platzky, the “2010 FIFA World Cup Coordinator from Provincial Government Western Cape”, describes the seminars as “energetic” and “inspiring”, their aim being to “give all football guests an unforgettable experience in the Mother City and the Province”.

The TSEI document has the logos of the Department of Tourism, TSEI and the Disney Institute, as well as of FEDHASA, at the bottom of the document. FEDHASA’s has a web address linked to it (no other web addresses are supplied), but it is not FEDHASA’s web address – it is the web address of FEDHASA CEO Brett Dungan’s private Rooms4U booking portal, which has been criticised on this blog previously!

The TSEI document states that customer service should be improved “in anticipation of the millions of guests to the games” (our underlining). One wonders where this statistic comes from – 3 million tickets are meant to have been sold, but this does not mean 3 million ticket holders, given that tourism consultancy Grant Thornton has estimated that each visitor will watch 5 matches on average, reducing the number of ticketholders to 600 000 on average! Also, one talks about “games” for the Olympics, but for the World Cup they are called “matches”! In a “mastery” of copywriting, it claims that The Department of Tourism had in 2008 already “crafted” (did they mean drafted?) the Tourism Service Excellence Strategy, to “take Service Excellence in the Tourism Service Value Chain to greater heights”.

It then explains why service levels must be taken to greater heights, in that service excellence in the past has been hampered by (wait for it…….) “the negative impact of apartheid (!), a largely autocratic management style (!), the lack of an established culture of customer service, insufficient training, systemic educational concerns, the poor image of the service industry by most, and the harsh economic realities of many workers who remain focused on survival rather than service” (our exclamation marks). Phew!

Internationally, we rank in the middle, at 62nd of 124 countries, on competitiveness, in the 2007(!) World Tourism Council Competitiveness Report. The Department says that the level of service delivery ranges from good to very poor in our country. That is why it has appointed The Disney Institute to conduct Service Excellence Seminars, “which are designed and focused in creating a culture of service excellence”. Come on – can a 2-hour seminar create a culture of Service Excellence, no matter if it is presented by The Disney Institute?!

Boldly the document continues about the objectives of the Service Excellence Initiative, all defined as being for “2010 and beyond”:

1. “Championing service transformation

2. Creating a customer service orientated SA

3. Crafting a ‘solution-minded’ customer service culture in SA

4. Providing human behaviour solution to SA

5. Ensuring SA delivers world-class customer service

6. Touch the entire service economy so that 2010 leaves a legacy”.

While it is clear that not all points are meant to be addressed by the seminars, the last one is – once again, how can they think that they can achieve this in two hours?!

The document states who should attend, and it lists immigration and customs officials, the police, tourism officials, “local government”, as well as private sector front-line staff in tourism and travel, hospitality, petrol stations, transport and banking. Each participant is to receive a certificate and a Service Guideline Card, for which an extra half an hour has been allowed.

The best is kept for last – the value that a company’s staff will gain from attendance at the seminars:

“* Engage employees to be personally involved in creating and delivering quality customer service

* Explore the significance of performance accountability, ensuring an equal weight value between business results and employee behaviors (sic) that enhances a positive work culture (straight from the Disney Institute literature no doubt)

* Learn the significance of creating and sustaining a corporate culture by design rather than default (?)

* Introduce the concept of “Common Purpose” as the organization’s chief global service driver” (we are tiny local non-global tourism related businesses in the main!)

The final best is the “dynamic” pay-off line that the copywriter ends off with : “Be Brilliant – Tourism Service Excellence Initiative” !!!!!!!!!!

If the Department of Tourism’s Tourism Service Excellence Initiative document is anything to go by, its Service Excellence Workshops will be Mickey Mouse! I cannot wait to attend, to experience this magical 2-hour transformation in Service Excellence!

POSTSCRIPT: After writing this post, I found an article written earlier this week by Natalia Thomson of S A Tourism Update about the same topic. She writes that the Disney Institute contract is worth R 9,5 million, and that 250 000 persons will be put through the workshops around the country. Read her cynical and critical article here.

Read our follow-up article about the presentation here.

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio : www.whalecottage.com