What Works: Creating Raving Fans Through the Guest Experience

We need to redefine customer service.

Too often, attractions train their staff using phrases like “treat the customer with respect,” “smile and be polite,” “put yourself in the guest’s shoes,” or “customer service is all about being nice.”

These statements aren’t wrong, but their overuse means they’ve lost a lot of their meaning. They’re used with good intentions when developing training materials and service standards, but creating the standards isn’t the challenging part: It’s making the meaning stick with every team member, every guest, every time.

In the attractions industry, we often say that we strive to create memories that last a lifetime, but rarely is that statement expanded upon. It’s more than a soft, warm, fuzzy statement—it’s the business model! Visiting an attraction is a finite experience with a beginning and an end, and the core product that guests take with them is the memory of their experience (and hopefully some retail, which is a tangible representation of their memory).

An individual’s memory of the experience influences their future action. A guest visiting for the second time likely has a positive memory from their first visit. A first-time guest may have made the decision to visit an attraction based on the recommendation of another guest, where their memory turned into a story, social media post, or online review.

With a focus on memory, we can reframe how we craft experiences. When putting together service standards and training modules, instead of asking, “Is this good customer service?” we should ask, “How will the guest remember this interaction?” We need to consider how the guest will share the experience with others long after they leave. What will they say and how loudly will they say it?

The more intentional we are about service delivery, the stronger the memory we can create, and the higher the likelihood that a guest will come back and eventually become an extension of our marketing by influencing others. The more you break from your routine, the more opportunities you receive to exceed expectations—creating an even more impactful memory.

However, it’s crucial to remember that a strong memory can be positive or negative, and the memory of a bad experience can outweigh the positive ones. Negative experiences can do more damage to your reputation than how a positive experience can strengthen a guest’s lingering perception.

A single negative review can turn away up to 30 prospective guests—now, multiply that by your average party size and per capita spend. It adds up! But if you apply this same mentality to the lens of service recovery, you can ask yourself, “How can I make the recovery even more memorable than the complaint?” Doing so will lead the guest to instead focus on how you went above and beyond to fix their problem. Change the mindset, and you’ll change the future.

If we shift our focus from satisfaction to creating memorable interactions, we can become the industry that redefines customer service.