Week One EOC: Great Customer Service

Finding truly great customer service in a world full of less-than-enthused employees can be a daunting task for any consumer in the free market. For me, a paying customer in a tank full of corporate sharks, competitive pricing may seem like one of the only driving factors keeping me spending my hard earned American dollar. However, quite the contrary stands true: I believe great customer service and the customer experience defines a company. “Customer relationships and value are especially important in today’s tough economic times, when more frugal consumers are cutting back and spending more carefully. “The challenge facing us is not just one of consumers being more-value conscious,” says one marketing consultant. “It’s how we gain … a renewed relationship with consumers who have less inclination to listen to [companies with whom] they do not have strong and valued relationships (Marketing: An Introduction for Education Management Corporation, 4).”

My stand out memory of great customer service, as cliché as it sounds, comes from a time at Disneyland. No matter how many times you visit; from the minute you walk into the park, you are truly treated like a prince or princess. Effectively, you are an heir to the Disney name—treated like royalty. Whether forced or not, the experience—the Disney experience, is shared both by first timers and regulars every day.  Like the aforementioned quote states, any consumer in the day and age that we live in today is at least a little hesitant to spend upwards of $150 just for entrance to a park. What’s more is that once inside, you still have to pay highly inflated prices for any food or Mouse Ears you want to take home with you. Even so, Disneyland manages to attract a constant, loyal horde of fanatics to its gates every day and never fails to amaze and share the Disney Magic from young to old. It wasn’t just one employee or experience that lead me to feel this way, but the customer experience as a whole provided by the Disney cast: the ambience, the authenticity of the different sceneries, the characters and cast members, which led me to truly have one of the happiest days out of the 365 given to every consumer each year.