Care for your guests: the resource that matters
In how many categories can you divide attractions into? Let me guess: just two. Those who care, and those who don’t.
I don’t have the most experience, I don’t have the most money, but I do care the most. Let me see what happens if I care the most.
— Sara Blakely from Spanx, on Masterclass
In my career, I’ve visited over 200 amusement parks. Still, I have a challenge in dividing them into categories. Because these categories might resonate with suppliers or state laws. But when it comes to quality and success, there are only a couple of groups: attractions who care and attractions who don’t care.
Brands who serve and protect
Startuppers are anxious about protecting their ideas and VC are focused on the execution of them. Because what makes a business successful is what happens day after day, drip after drip, after the architects left the construction site, when the parking lot is empty, when you run out of burgers or when the curtains go up and your guests are telling you the truth: they chose you once, they may not choose you again.
Lush Cosmetics cares about animals: not only they don’t perform tests on them; they fight animal testing. Amazon cares about the customer no matter how suppliers and workers may be challenged. Patagonia cares about the world: reusing comes before recycling. The greengrocer near my home cares about taste and scent: no fruit he sells is below awesomeness.
Brands who differentiate by caring
Most of the time, though, under the mission statement or a tagline, care has different facets. If Lush’s products didn’t look right to the story they’re telling, if the stores didn’t participate to the magic of the brand, if the staff wasn’t able to inspire change to customers, if the proof under the shower wouldn’t stand the promise, harming any animal with your tests wouldn’t be enough for the users. A soap’s basic task is to clean. Yes, it can also be fair, sustainable, good looking, rough, natural, scented. That is the place where the entrepreneur’s choices come to life.
Brands who differentiate by truly caring are so different from the ones that care by strategy. Care doesn’t come officially as a means of production, like a chapter in the annual report. Who knew it’s the main fuel to a business long-lasting success?
Are you relevant to me?
Even in the attraction industry, we hide so often behind a “can’t do this — we are under a budget cut”; “Yes we know, but…”; “Our new policy prevents us from…”.
Sorry guys, there is just one individual that can see with honesty which category you do belong do — the ones who care, the ones who don’t — our individual guest. Not the clusters we see on surveys, not the categories we analyze in reports. Every day that you are open, you will meet him dozens (of thousands in some case!) of times.
Who you are truly matters to me. I see you and I care. Not just words.
How will you take responsibility to be coherent between what you’ve put in your staff training, what you say and what you do to each and every guest?
