How to Create Unforgettable Customer Experiences the Disney Way ...with John Formica

Summary

In this conversation, John Formica, America's customer experience coach, shares insights on transforming customer service into unforgettable experiences. He emphasizes the importance of emotional connections, imagination, and curiosity in building customer loyalty. John discusses how businesses can create meaningful touchpoints, even in a digital landscape, and how to handle customer complaints effectively. He also highlights the role of AI in enhancing customer experiences while maintaining a personal touch. The discussion concludes with actionable steps for business owners to stand out in a competitive market.

Takeaways

• Businesses must focus on creating emotional connections with customers.
• Imagination is key to selling experiences, not just products.
• Curiosity drives customer engagement and satisfaction.
• Loyalty is built through exceptional experiences before, during, and after the sale.
• Touchpoints are crucial for maintaining customer relationships, even in digital interactions.
• Empathy is essential when handling customer complaints.
• Turning negative experiences into positive ones can create loyal customers.
• AI can enhance customer experiences but should not replace human interaction.
• Added value can differentiate a business from its competition.
• Understanding customer needs is vital for business success.

Chapters

00:00 Transforming Customer Experience Beyond Products
07:13 The Disney Approach to Emotional Connections
11:19 Building Loyalty in a Transactional World
15:24 Creating Touchpoints in a Digital Landscape
21:33 Handling Customer Complaints the Disney Way
27:14 Standing Out in a Competitive Market

Links

https://johnformica.com/

Free Website Evaluation: FroBro.com/Dominate

Transcript

Jeffro (00:01.665)
Now, what if you could get hundreds of customers, turn them into raving fans and crush your competition all without lowering your prices? Well, that's exactly what today's guest, John Formica, helps businesses do. John was a leader at Disney for many years, and he is now known as America's customer experience coach. And that's because he has helped countless small businesses create magical customer experiences that lead to insane loyalty, nonstop referrals and long term growth. So in this episode, we're going to talk about what you're really selling beyond your product or service.

how to create meaningful human connections in a digital world, and the Disney-inspired way to build a fan base that sticks with you for life. I'm a Disney fan, so I've been looking forward to this episode. John, welcome to Digital Dominance.

John Formica (00:44.238)
Thank you very much. I'm honored to be here and helping those listening any way they can to create a great successful business. That's what we're all about.

Jeffro (00:57.816)
Awesome. Well, let's start, John, you know, there's so many businesses that think they're just selling a service or product and they're very focused on that in their marketing and the way they talk to people. But obviously you said that's not really the case. So let's talk about what are they actually selling and how do they figure that out, shift that perspective.

John Formica (01:14.381)
Sure, sure. know, when people, it's kind of interesting. I'm known as America's customer experience coach, but I have a nickname, Jefferyl, and it's, the anti-customer service guy. And people laugh and they go, what does that mean? Well, I get it. You need to serve your customers. And I'm sure everyone out there does a great job. But if you just serve your customers, in my opinion, I think you're boring. I think you've settled on being average and just doing the basics to take care of your customers. And what happens is,

you don't create an emotional connection with your customers. And the way to create that emotional connection is with the experience. so I try to think about how you can connect emotionally with your customers before, during, and after the sale that gets them to think of you. That you become the top of mind awareness. That they enjoy doing business with you. Yes, you need to have a great product. You have to have a great service. We all get that.

Today's world, we want more. The consumer wants more. And successful businesses now have to think about how do you connect emotionally with your customers?

Jeffro (02:25.206)
Yeah. Well, I mean, to your point, a lot of people think customer service, they think that just means being polite and helpful. And that's the end of it. We have good customer service, but to take it to that next level of a customer experience, can you expand a little bit more on how can a business go from good service to unforgettable experience?

John Formica (02:44.814)
Sure, sure. Well, to answer your question, the first one that you asked me as far as what are we really selling? I want people to think about something. Disney sells three things really, really well. They're the top notch. mean, there a lot of people that are taking that on and doing the same thing, but Disney sells three things really well. And if you think of a business, your business, and you figure out how you can sell those same three things, you're gonna be extremely successful in this.

customer experience emotion arena. So the first thing you have to think about is what are you really selling? And I'm going to tell you what you should be selling is imagination. And we all know imagination is a really big thing that Disney sells with their theme parks and the resorts and all this fantasy and the magic kingdom and cartoon characters. get all that. But what I talk about imagination is does your customer imagine doing business with you?

If there's a product or service that you provide, what are the benefits that you provide that they're imagining having their problem solved or being entertained or getting something fixed or whatever business you're in, how do you sell that imagination? Because that's the first connection in emotional bonding in that experience. And so if you think about Disney, I use this funny example.

At Walt Disney World, when I worked at Disney, my job was to manage the Disney Resort Hotels. And at Disney, we wanted you to stay on Disney property. We didn't want you to go to the Hyatts and the Marriottts and stay off property. We wanted you to stay on property at a Disney-run resort hotel. So what Disney did in their advertising and their promotion is to put, picture this. You're sitting in a hotel room.

You have a little girl on a bedroom dressed as a princess with a big magic wand in her hand, right? And she's adorable. And mom's all smiling because she's just happy because her child is happy. The whole room is decorated in Mickey Mouse theme. But here's the secret. You look outside the window and you see the Magic Kingdom Castle right there outside the window. So automatically you're imagining, we gotta stay there. Look how close it is. Imagine.

John Formica (05:10.837)
watching the fireworks from our balcony or, honey, we could walk to the park. And all of a sudden that imagination kicks in. Well, here's the secret. Don't want to disappoint anybody, but if you saw that picture and you stayed at Disney at one of the resorts, you're realize not every room overlooks the Magic Kingdom Castle. But that one did and that would connect emotionally that all of a sudden you're thinking, we gotta go stay there. We don't wanna stay off rock.

Right? So think about in your business, what are the benefits of what you offer? And whether it's digital marketing, whether it's in the experience, whatever it might be, are you selling the benefits, not the features, not all the amenities, but what is it for them? And that will automatically start to connect with me emotionally. We see it on advertisements everywhere, right? If you want to lose weight,

They imagine being skinny or wearing those skinny jeans or putting on a bikini or looking sharp with nice clothes, whatever it is. They start planting that imagination. And that's what we need to do is what we sell. And the second thing is, Jefferyl, we need to sell curiosity. And the curiosity is the imagination kicks into what is it going to be like doing business with you? What is your product going to do? Will you be dependable?

Will your staff be friendly? Will it be easy to do business with you? All of those things are curious. We have to make sure we capture that curiosity. And then the third thing with Disney sells is happiness. But for the consumer world and any of your business owners that are watching, it's satisfaction, customer satisfaction. And if your customers are happy, they're gonna be satisfied. They're gonna tell everybody else. So those are the things that we need to think about before we transform.

from a customer service environment to a customer experience environment. Does that make sense?

Jeffro (07:13.674)
That does. And so you kind of have to figure out how to paint the picture so they can see what the other side looks like and then want to get there with you.

John Formica (07:22.263)
That's right, absolutely, All in a human connection type of environment. We never wanna lose fact that it is still, whether it's a digital world or whatever it might be, it's still some sort of, somewhere in that experience, in that journey, we need to make sure that we have great human connection.

Jeffro (07:47.478)
What would you say to the owner who might be a little more, I don't know, not down to earth, maybe that's not the right term, but they might be hard for them to picture themselves making a commercial or a video where they're doing this with a roof repair, right? And they're showing the happy family of like, wow, it's raining, but we're warm inside. Maybe to them it might feel too quaint or not quite realistic. And maybe they're just not comfortable kind of doing that. How do you help them?

get to that place where they are thinking in that term of imagination.

John Formica (08:21.911)
Yeah, from the marketing perspective, it's gotta be, what's the benefit of their company? What's the benefit that they do? Not just the features. Gosh, most, and I've seen this in roofers, where their marketing is all about the type of shingle that you use and it's organic and it's made. Nobody cares about that. They wanna know what's in it for me, right? So what's the benefit of that particular shingle?

or roof repair or getting a new roof. What's the benefit? Well, a lot of it is the benefit is maybe save on utilities, heat costs. And now you can use that money to spend on other fun things for the family or whatever it might be. Or maybe it's we're not a big company. We're a small business so we can provide personal attention. We don't just send reps to your house to put on a roof. We're personally there to stand by you every step of the way.

That's a benefit of having a smaller business versus some big, huge company being in that roofing thing. So always kind of focus on that because then the imagination kicks in like, wow, that does make sense. Yes, that's what attracted me to your business in the first place. Because to the consumer, Jeffery, we think everybody's the same. I don't know how to differentiate you. Come on, one roofer, plumber, electrician, they're all the same. I come on.

But if I go work with any of my clients who are plumbers and electricians, and I always ask them, what makes you different? I have to try to take them from what are their amenities and what are their features to the benefits, right? Nobody cares if you've been in business for 50 years, because I know plumbers that are really great and been in business for one year. You don't have to be 50 years in business anymore. But so what are those benefits? That's what we're trying to drive. And any small company

regardless of the industry, think about what's in it for them. What do your customers want? One of my favorite quotes from Walt Disney is you don't build a product for yourself. You find out what the people want and you build it for them. What do they want in a roofer, in a plumber, in a retail store, in a brick and mortar restaurant? What do they want? We know they need your products and services, but what is it that they want?

Jeffro (10:50.196)
So what about, let's move to the next step of that. So let's say we figured out how to kind of convey that message. What about the loyalty aspect? know, for people that want to come back over and over, it makes sense for some companies more than others. But if you're in some kind of commodity or like only emergency fixes is when I call them. Or even if it's, you know, a roof job, like you're not going to redo your roof more than once every 10 years or something. So you can't rely on that repeat business. You'd need them to tell other people. So how do you

John Formica (11:19.373)
That's right.

Jeffro (11:20.243)
build that kind of loyalty to where not only do they come back to you if they need you, but they're telling other people about you.

John Formica (11:27.245)
That's right. And that's where most people don't understand this. There's three pieces of the customer experience that I try to work with my clients and help them create. And that is what kind of experience do they get before the sale? What's the experience during the sale? And what's the experience after the sale? So the goal of a roofer, let's say, since we're using this as an example, yeah, it's going to be 15 years where I'm not going to need another roof.

But how many people do I know that might need a roof? And if you just give me an average experience and someone says, have you had your roof done lately? And they go, yeah, I had one. Who'd you use? I used ABC roofing. Were they okay? Were they good? Yeah, they're all right. That's not very convincing, right? But if I said, oh my gosh, if you ever need a roof, you need to go to XYZ roofing, these guys,

Jeffro (12:00.243)
Mm-hmm.

John Formica (12:24.127)
are incredible and they're gonna go, why? They just did a good job on your roof. No, I'm telling you, they came out before, they assessed everything. During they were there, they cleaned up, everything was awesome, they checked with us. They even called back afterwards, make sure that the place was clean. And then all of a sudden I got a nice gift in the mail because getting a new roof is a lot of money. I got a nice gift in the mail, this nice package came by.

See, it's keeping that type of mind awareness that if you exceed the expectations, right? If you exceed the expectations, what I try to do is what my clients, is I do a journey map with every single touch point with that customer. And Jeffery, it starts with marketing. That's a touch point, right? We want to make sure we connect there as well. All through, and then when I go back, we look at each touch point, we go, where can we, what Walt Disney used to say,

Jeffro (13:10.706)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

John Formica (13:21.805)
plus it by one. Where can we do this much better? And you'd be amazed of just this much in each one of those touch points adds up to be, you won't believe it. Cause most again, they're thinking, come on, it's just a roofer or it's just a plumber. You go, no, they're not. And just like Disney is not just a amusement park, it's not just a hotel, it's an experience, right? And so,

We wanna be able to look at each one of those touch points and try to differentiate yourself from your competition. What do they do? I don't want you to copy them. I just want you to do it better than them. That's what I want you to do. And a lot of small business owners don't take the time or take their experience for granted. I'll give you a perfect example. I just came across this survey and they surveyed business owners, thousands of business owners and they said,

on a scale from one to 10, how would you rate your customer experience? And over 90 % said eight, okay? That we give a good experience for our customers. And then they surveyed customers and the customer gave them a two. So there's a big disconnect between what an owner thinks, I'm good at a great job and what the consumer or customer is actually getting.

And that's where we need to constantly be in touch with our customers to find out, are we giving them what they want, not just what they need.

Jeffro (14:48.944)
Right.

Jeffro (14:55.826)
That makes sense. Now, for an in-person business, whether that's a storefront or a hotel property, a roofer, you're interacting in person and it's easy to imagine a lot of those touch points and how you can make them good. What about for companies that are completely remote and digital, where I never go to somebody's house when I build them a website necessarily, it might only be Zoom calls. Is it harder for those remote companies to create those touch points or is it even easier because nobody else is doing it when you actually start doing stuff?

John Formica (15:24.161)
Yeah, great, two great points right there. One is you have to find a way, again, either before, during or after, where can you throw in a touch point? Where can you throw in some sort of human connection, whatever it might be, right? Most of it is gonna be digital, most of it is gonna be, like you said, through the internet or whatever it might be. You're not touching somebody, you're not visiting their business, but there's still ways that we can...

go in there. I'll give you a perfect example. was working with an online company who sold products online and they're like, I get these orders. I don't even know who these people are. They just come in and I wake up in the morning and I made some money. That's great. I'm like, that's awesome. Well, maybe there's certain customers that you know have the potential to give you even more money or maybe it was a high price ticket. Maybe they bought a lot of stuff.

from you or you find out that they bought often from you. Those are the ones. It's kind of the 80-20 rule. 20 % of your customers give you 80 % of the business. Find out who those 20 % are and touch them. A thank you card, a little gift, a little acknowledgement, a phone call, something. You don't have to do all of them because I know that might take a lot of time. But I'm gonna tell you the rewards and the benefits of touching those few.

And here's the other piece of that that we just talked about. Nobody else does that, Jeff Roe. So you do just a little bit, you're way ahead of everybody else. Because think about it, when did you ever go online to buy something and you got a thank you note or a gift card in the mail? It just doesn't happen. I'll tell you a company that does do that is Build the Bear Workshop, Build the Bear, and also Chewy, Chewy, the pet company, Chewy.

My wife is on an online, we get our pet food, have two cats, we get our food all the time, just delivers regularly. But we get cards in the mail, we get gifts from my cats on their birthday. Like they get it, they get it, right? And they understand that it's still a human connection somewhere. Even though all their stuff is online and I never talked to anybody and I don't walk into their store, they still try to.

Jeffro (17:36.346)
Nice.

John Formica (17:50.094)
figure out a way, and even if I get a birthday card once a year, boy, that's powerful because nobody else does it, right? So I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna tell my friends, I'm gonna tell my neighbors, I'm gonna tell people that you don't even know who I know. And that's where you're gonna build that business that way.

Jeffro (18:08.603)
Yeah, and that kind of leads into my next thought, which was, you the world is moving towards more automation and more AI, but if you're still putting in these human connections and touch points, then of course you're going to stand out even more. It's going to be amplified, even if it is just one little thing.

John Formica (18:22.957)
That's right. Yeah, absolutely. And AI is going to transform a lot of things. We know that. And it's coming at rapid speed. And I'd be an old dinosaur and say, AI is not going to work. You still need people. I can't say that because I'm going to be laughed at. OK? I get it. But right now, AI, if there's a way to enhance the experience through AI, maybe make things easier, more convenient,

Right? Nothing wrong with that. Right. So I'm going to use AI. I'm going to get, I'm going to use AI to do the menial tasks that maybe they can take those tasks. So my staff now can focus on more personal interaction because they don't have, they're not bogged down with all this other stuff they have to do. So that's going to be beneficial, but there's some drawbacks of AI. and when I talk to some people about AI, sometimes the, the

Digital journey is like too complex, too complicated. There's all these multi-channels and you go here to get there to go there and sometimes it becomes confusing. The other thing to think about is every business needs to know their audience. Survey your audience, get feedback from your audience. You'll find out that there's gonna be a big percentage that they just wanna order online. I don't wanna call up my auto service repair shop.

and make an appointment to get my car fixed, can I just do that online? Can I just do that from an app? Yeah, make sure you can do that. But you can't just say, oh, by the way, all our reservations are now made online because there's a certain percentage of your customers you're gonna turn off. But that auto service repair shop has to find out who their customers are and ask, what's the best way you wanna make appointments?

What's the best way you would like us to communicate to you? Is it email? Is it text? Maybe we do both, right? So you got to know your audience, got to know who your customers are so that you can then tailor to them. There's no on or off. It's still going to be blended, but I still think somewhere in that AI experience, we need to keep that personalization somewhere.

John Formica (20:47.02)
And AI can help you because now I know more information about you, the customer, that I can now maybe take better care of you because of AI. Why not use AI for that thing? But you still want to have some sort of human personalization in there as best you can. Does that make sense?

Jeffro (21:05.326)
Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. And I want to ask you another question too, or I forget. So let's say something random happens. Most of the time, things are good, you're great, you do a great job, but once in a while there's a breakdown of communication or something just doesn't go right and a customer has a really bad experience. How do you fix that or talk them off the ledge so they don't go saying bad things about you or posting a negative review? What's the Disney way to handle that?

John Formica (21:33.134)
Absolutely, absolutely. Great question. And it'll tie right into the experience, by the way, and attaching emotions to this. So one of the things that most people are complaining about or upset about is when something didn't go right, or maybe they were told something and it turned out to be different, or product doesn't work, or whatever. So there's a couple of things. One, we have to focus on why that happened, and not just fix the problem, but make sure it doesn't happen again.

Best you can but here's the secret in dealing with complaints Tell the customer what you can do not when you can't do I mean I may not be able to give you a refund But let me tell you what I can do Jefferyl. Let me try to do this for you. Whatever it might be. Maybe it's a Give you something addition as added value to what you bought I'll fix the thing but I can't give you a refund but let me give you

Extra this or that or maybe I'll give you a coupon for a future visit or whatever I'll send you a gift card do something but but let me tell you what I can do and And when you tell me what you can do, it's very important But one of the things to really emphasize in customer complaints Whether it's online whether you know Google review or whatever it is you're answering the review or it's in person is empathy

is valuably important in your conversation. When I was a general manager of a hotel, gosh, first of all, I empowered my staff to do everything. Like, I don't care what you have to do as long as the customer's happy. Maybe we can figure out a better way of doing it. I don't want you to give the farm away, but if the customer's happy, because you were right in that situation, then I'm okay. And I used to educate and we used to have...

like training on what to do and what not to do. And I got to tell you, my staff was cheap. And they knew that if it got to me, I was giving everything away. But my staff was like, we can't give that away. We can just do this or do that. Like at Disney, rather than giving money back, why don't I, is there a particular restaurant that you have a difficult time getting into? Maybe I can get you a reservation. To that customer that was like, you can do that? Yeah. Now what did it cost?

John Formica (23:56.01)
Nothing, but to the perception of the customer that was a big one, right? So my my staff used to always come up with these creative ways of doing it But one of the things I used to tell a customer that if they were irate and they came to me I was I would just defuse it Empathize and say obviously if you come to me after going through my entire staff and they couldn't help you We really must have screwed up I'm here. What do you need, right?

Because I'm not here to make them defend themselves. Because if you think of us, we're all consumers, Jefferyl. When something goes wrong, we got to put up our defense of how we're going to prove to them that they screwed up. And that makes us uncomfortable. Why are you doing that? Why am I going to make my customers uncomfortable? I'm just going to diffuse it and say, you're right. And thank you. And I need your help. Because I don't want this to happen to anybody else.

Can you help me so we can get this resolved? But empathize, put yourself in their shoes. Why were they frustrating? What were they upset about? Maybe there's things I don't understand. Help me understand that. It's not just about fixing the transaction and going away, but here's the key. When something goes wrong and a company fixes it, repairs it, does whatever it is, that's a great opportunity to create a magical experience.

Right? That's the time to go up and beyond. And while that customer over the fact that here's something went wrong and they talk about how Disney fixed it or how that business fixed it, they turn something negative into positive. I mean, at Disney, we used to always figure out how can we blow them away for something that went wrong? And some things that went wrong were out of our control.

But we would go nuts. Why? It was a cost of doing business, but it was also an investment in the experience. And it gives them goodwill, and they go away happy, and they're gonna go away telling everybody else. We all know customers will tell more people if it's negative, right? And so we wanna make it positive so they tell even more. And when you think about Google reviews and Yelp and man.

John Formica (26:24.973)
How many people do we know write a bad comment? And now we're looking at how the owner responded to that comment, right? Now all of a sudden it's an audience. You're not just dealing one-on-one with the customer that had a problem. We're all sitting back going, yeah, yeah, what the hell they going to deal with that one? And that's just as important, isn't

Jeffro (26:35.488)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffro (26:45.173)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it is. Well, I love that, you know, obviously going above and beyond to fix it, you know, goes a long way to avoiding the negative reviews and things. But I like how you mentioned focus, not on what you can't do, but on what you can do. Cause there's usually something you can do. And I like the examples too of where can you provide value without it, you know, hitting the bottom line too hard, right? Cause that way it's a win-win and everybody's happy after that. So.

John Formica (27:09.293)
That's right.

John Formica (27:13.549)
But the worst thing in the world for any business, particularly a small business, is to have an upset customer who doesn't tell you. That's like the worst thing to have because we don't know all the people they know and how they know it. And gosh, I can't sleep at night if I have a customer that's upset and I don't feel like I helped them enough or did enough for them. I can't sleep at night because I'm thinking, my goodness, who in the world do they know that I don't know they know, right?

Jeffro (27:20.031)
Yeah.

Jeffro (27:42.355)
Yeah. Well, hopefully people have been paying lots of attention, taking good notes, because I really enjoyed talking with you today, John. You know, as a Disney fan myself, I like the idea of sitting back and thinking about what my company would look like if I ran it like Disney, you know, and infused all these different experiences. And I've already had some ideas just on this through this conversation. So I'm going to try and think more like that in the future, too. So guys listening, I encourage you guys to do the same thing. And if you want to connect with John or invite him to speak,

His info will be in the show notes as always. Obviously, he's got a lot of value to bring and a lot of positive energy too. So last question for you, John. If a business owner's listening right now, feeling like they blend in too much, what's the first step they can take to start standing out?

John Formica (28:27.777)
Yeah, try to think about what additional value you can give your customers. And value doesn't necessarily mean it'll cost you money, but a lot of customers will, a lot of businesses will discount to try to get customers or, and I'm okay with discounting. Maybe if you're opening up a new business, nobody knows about you, you got to get people in there. I get all that. I'm not wrong with that, but I try to figure out what.

added value can I give you? Whether it's a touch point, whether it's human interaction, whether it's additional services, whatever it might be, what added value can I give you that will connect with me emotionally, that will give me what I want, not just what I need, but what do I really want? You'll be surprised how far that will take you to differentiate you from your competition, because I'm not thinking that way. Your competition is just thinking about...

just getting customers. But I try to focus on, every business has to get customers, don't get me wrong. But I try to focus on what about the customers we already have? What can we do to enhance their experience so that we become the top of mind awareness in whenever they're choosing or referring others. And you'll build your business pretty quick that way as well.

Jeffro (29:46.986)
It makes a lot of sense. Well, thanks a lot, John, for being here. Thanks to all you guys for listening. If you found this episode helpful, please leave a review on iTunes or Spotify. Now go work on your customer experience, guys, and we'll see you next time. Take care.

John Formica (30:00.686)
Thank you.