Chapter 4

Images

Never a Customer, Always a Guest

You don’t build the product for yourself. You need to know what the people want and build it for them.

Walt Disney

In an age when consumers all across the country bemoan the state of customer service, The Walt Disney Company is repeatedly hailed as a superior service provider and perhaps the best in the world. On the day Disneyland opened, Walt himself proclaimed: “Visitors are our Guests.” Since then, the bar has continually been raised to new heights in the Company’s desire to delight its Guests.

The theme of visitors being treated as Guests also emerges in nearly every movie Walt Disney made. The dwarfs ...

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