Book Review - Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service by The Disney Institute

Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service by The Disney Institute
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐(5 of 5 stars)

Why you should read this book: You're looking for a short, fun inspiration towards customer obsession....Or if you're looking for an excuse to visit a Disney Park for "career development".

Why you should not read this book: If you haven't visited a Disney park before and experienced the magic yourself. Honestly think that it might ruin the magic the first time, and the book might end up sounding like classic corporate BS.

Summary

[Disclaimer: I read this simultaneously with Onward by Howard Schultz, so it's impossible not to compare, which I'll refer to below. If you're looking for customer obsession, read this book before Onward.]

A well-organized, clear, and concise book, Be Our Guest was a fun, breezy read that communicates the philosophy and culture of a customer-obsessed company. In addition to using case studies from the Disney parks, the book references companies in other industries to help users visualize concrete examples for other industries. Readers familiar with Disney parks will recognize many of the examples, and the previously-unknown Easter Eggs are delightful to learn about, particularly the less visible or operational examples (such as the thoughtful placement of garbage cans).

One underrated aspect that other similar books seem to underemphasize is the iterative nature of continual improvement, especially as consumers change and entering new markets. It's so easy to negligently assume a static characterization of our "customers", which is how companies get left in the dust by disruptors, and it was eye-opening to see how Disney parks have evolved since opening. Even more so, this book is a bit dated and doesn't include some of the new magical experiences at Disney (amazing smartphone app, for example), which is additional testament to the continual improvement and proactivity by the company.

Many ideas and concepts in the book may seem like traditional corporate culture (having company-specific language, putting the customer first, attention to detail, etc), but it's obvious that Disney rises above most corporations in almost all categories from the consumer perspective. It seems to me that to achieve this transformation executives need to put their money where their mouth is, particularly with valuing their cast members (aka employees). For example, from an outsider, it seems that harnessing employee ideas is more central to Disney's operations than it is to Starbucks, despite the lip service to it.

This is a 4 star book, but gets +1 stars because of the conciseness, one of the most underrated aspect of books nowadays. Like they said in the book, magical experiences aren't only created by what guests see and hear, it's also the things that they don't see (in Disney, trash in the park; in this book - extra filler pages!)!

[Helpful summary page : https://lifeclub.org/books/be-our-gue...]

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