Lessons From Disney To Implement in Your Studio

It's supercalifragilisticexpialidocious - after a quick weekend trip with my hubby to Disneyland, I was really reminded why Disney is the master at what they do. I want to share with you a few things you can implement into your studio to increase student retention and increase your client lifetime value.

The customer journey is the number one priority. 

When you visit Disneyland, Disney World, Disney Paris, and all the Disney parks you see how they make the customer the priority. Take this lesson to your studio and look at how you make the experience not just a desirable experience, but a magical experience. Disney makes everything they do and that the client encounters as magical as possible. 

Think about your customer journey. What is their first impression of you and your brand even before they step a foot in your doorway? Where do they discover you? Is it your website, or your Facebook Group? What is the first impression that they see? From the beginning and on each step of the way, what are they seeing? Does it feel seamless and easy?

Having your customer journey be the number one priority does not mean you are going to make everybody happy. It does not mean that everyone is going to agree with us and everything that we do. What it means is that we're thinking about the experience. Like you want every single person to walk away thinking you’ve thought about all the details. 

The magic lies in the details. 

When we think about little details along the way, it creates magic for them. They think you anticipated their needs before they even knew what those needs were, or they hit me with all the information right when I was thinking about it. They knew me so well because they knew their ideal clients so well. They knew me so well that they front-loaded and addressed all the questions that they knew I was going to have.

It’s time to go from average to awesome! That lies in those details. How are we gonna supersize it? How are we gonna plus it? And it's by adding those little cherries on top details. Disney goes the extra mile in the details. We were watching the parade and, because we didn’t have our children with us this time, this allowed us to view things from a different set of eyes. We got to look at all the details. 

One of the things we noticed is that every person performing in the parade personified the Disney magic. They all knew how to make the experience magical for everyone watching. It got me thinking about dance studios. Are we teaching our staff the details that matter? We don't do average; we do awesome! (that’s the motto of our staff)

Empower Your Staff

Empower them to make decisions. Empower them to create magical moments for people, which equals raving fans. We had a special magical experience at Disney that couldn’t have happened without the staff being empowered to create magic for us. We were in Disney all decked out. When a cast member saw that we had all of that, they created magic for us. We were in line to go on the storybook canal boats. They said, “We want to give you your own ride.” It was a magical experience to be in the boat all by ourselves. That empowered cast member took the time to make a magical moment for us, which I am raving about Disney now. 

When you empower your staff members, your teacher, your front desk admin, and your program manager to make decisions because they know what your culture is and they know what your values are, you and your team will create raving fans who then go out into your community and share with everybody how amazing it is to be in your program.