An article appeared in one of the sources I read a few days back and it involved an amusement park. As I am a roller coaster junkie I was intrigued and started reading. The article was about the customer service aspect of the amusement park industry. The author mentioned that he had just secured an ice cream cone only to drop as he was walking away. The team at Six Flags quickly sprung into action and had another ice cream cone ready for him before he even asked.
As we all know theme parks are typically seasonal operations and as a roller coaster junkie the words “Off Season” are dreaded because it means no more coaster riding for a while. On the other side of that theme parks are seasonal operations and with that come traditions. Families build traditions and theme parks are centered around those traditions so as a theme park operator you want the experiences those families have in the summer months to become memories during the off season so that when the new season rolls around they return to your park. He then stated the words in the article that stuck out to me and had me asking the question, how can we practice anticipatory customer service within a school so that the experiences of our students, staff and parents be a positive venture and one that makes them want to come back to us after the “off season” is over? The words he typed were:
“Then you drop your cone: you do a total cone-plant on the midway. It’s such a simple, prosaic accident, but it can tarnish your whole day, or at least your memories of the day. And memories are all-important to a theme park operator like Six Flags. The mental snapshot stored in memory during the winter months needs to be a positive one, so that when the weather turns summery their customers will hurry back to the parks, bringing new generation after new generation with them.”
Where does the process start? What does the process look like? What are the common questions or problems that always come about? How we can design our processes to be responsive before the student, parent or staff even have to say something about a situation? How can we help develop those positive memories?
