Perfecting the Customer Experience is a unique, three day benchmarking program held twice a year in Anaheim California. The workshop provides open enrollment participants serious business lessons in a fun, immersive environment.
Your facilitators, Jeff Kober and Ted Topping are your hosts in this intense, small group program that allows participants to see the business behind the wonder of Disney.
Participants walk away with new ideas for taking their organization, whether in the public, private, or non-profit sector, to new heights.
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Jeff Kober views business from a Disney background. Ted Topping views Disney from a business background. Together they will help you experience both from the crucial perspective of your customer.
Formerly a leader with the Disney Institute, Jeff Kober, president of Performance Journeys, has authored several books and apps on building strong brands and developing high performing cultures.
Ted Topping is president of Creative Insights, a service-design consulting firm in Vancouver. Known globally for his work in retail, he is author of the best-selling book Start and Run a Retail Business and numerous magazine articles.
As authors, speakers, and consultants, both Jeff and Ted work with organizations to create sustained results in a consumer-facing business.
Perfecting the Customer Experience
Jeff Kober and Ted Topping teach a course at Disneyland called Perfecting the Customer Experience. Students learn Disney's customer service techniques and how to apply them. If you can't attend the course, you're in the right place, because Jeff and Ted are here exclusively to share some of its precepts.
This Disney Queue Music Sets You Soarin'
OCT 31Ted Topping benchmarks the queue for Soarin' Over California and finds a music loop that touches Guests' hearts, setting them up for the emotional experience of the attraction.
Disney Souvenir Books
OCT 20Helping Customers Promote Your Product
We Became Disney Customers Long Before Purchasing
SEP 28 An amazing customer experience at the departure of Disney Wonder's end-of-season sailing made Ted Topping a Disney Cruise Line customer without him even buying a ticket.
Guest Service Foundations at Disneyland
SEP 16 Jeff Kober shares a letter written years ago by a Disneyland Guest about his visit to the park. The things that he describes are still the very foundations of customer service, the things that make Disney and any other organization succeed.
"Coming Soon" Builds the Disney Relationship
SEP 10 Ted Topping discusses three ways in which Disney uses "Coming Soon" – normally a way of promoting movies – to create a sale, add value to that sale and then convert it into a long-term relationship.
Mind Thy Head
SEP 5 Jeff Kober gives us some lessons from Tarzan's Treehouse.
Park Cleanliness Links Guests Directly to Walt
AUG 14 Ted Topping spilled a half-full coffee cup while waiting for Disney's Electrical Parade, and began to learn a benchmarking lesson that links park Guests directly to "management by walking around" style of Walt Disney.
What Meanest "The Backside of Water"?
AUG 7 Everyone knows about the backside of water on the Jungle Cruise. It's an integral part of every skipper's script, and it's still good for a chuckle. For Walt, though, perfecting the back side as well as the front side was serious business.
Area Music Heightens the Experience
JUL 31 Ted Topping visits Condor Flats in Disney California Adventure and discovers an area music loop so strong it can later invoke the entire customer experience, planting a tuneful seed to grow into the desire for a return trip.
Tahitian Terrace: A "Can Do" Place
JUL 24 Admiral Joe Fowler, one of Walt Disney's most trusted associates, had as his mantra two simple, one syllable words: "Can Do". Whatever Walt wanted: "Can Do". Jeff Kober provides examples in Disneyland of Joe Fowler's "Can Do" approach.
Adding Layers to the Customer Experience
JUL 17 In the Enchanted Tiki Room, the flowers may bloom, but they don't benchmark. Ted Topping does. With him are Wendy to lead the tour, Ophelia to deliver the "Wow", and Walt himself to provide the vision for an instructive look at the Tiki Room.
Do You Remember Super Service?
JUL 10 Jeff means super service at service stations, and yes, I do. It wasn't that long ago when a stop for gas included a wipe of the windshield and a fluids check - free! Is the service still super at the gas stations in the Disney parks? Jeff pulls in to find out...
Crossing Paths with the Legends
JUL 3 Several years ago, Ted Topping attended the 40th anniversary celebration at Disneyland for Pirates of the Caribbean. As a Disney fan, Ted met some Disney Legends; as a business writer, Ted learned some Disney lessons, which he shares with us here.
Storybook Circus
JUN 26 Best-selling author Jeff Kober is perhaps the premiere authority on how to make use of the business and cultural principles of The Disney Corporation to solve your own on-the-job challenges. His latest example: Storybook Circus.
Disney Wonder Brings Magic To Vancouver
MAY 4 Snow, polar bears, Alaska - not what most people associate with a Disney vacation! But as Ted Topping reports, that is exactly what you will encounter if you book a cruise on the Disney Wonder departing from its new port in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Day Three: Building a Solid Service Culture
APR 29 In the third and final article of a series about the Disney customer experience, Jeff Kober strolls through Disneyland and points out a few of the many, many details and themes that form the bedrock of Disney's service culture.
Day Two: Disney's Service Values
APR 28 In the second of three articles about the Disney customer experience, Ted Topping explains Disney's service values (safety, courtesy, show, efficiency) and, in the clever context of a ride on Mickey's Fun Wheel, demonstrates their use.
Day One: Leadership Excellence at Disney
APR 27 In the first of three articles about the Disney customer experience, Jeff Kober discusses the 'Chain Reaction of Excellence', which begins at the top with effective leadership. As examples, Jeff uses Abe Lincoln, Frank Wells, and Walt Disney.
Ted Topping and the Disney Customer Experience
APR 12 Everyone knows that Disney provides fantastic customer experience, perhaps the best of its kind in the world. But knowing and doing are two different things. How to take what you know and do it for your organization? Ted Topping has some ideas.
Jeff Kober and the Disney Customer Experience
APR 6 Mickey's methods, the business principles that Disney perfected over time to provide an optimal 'customer experience', really aren't rocket science. You can learn them. You can apply them. But you need a great teacher. Like Jeff Kober!
About "Perfecting the Customer Experience"
APR 1 The real Disney magic isn't so much the Mouse as it is the customer service. If you want to learn the 'processes behind the pixie dust', Jeff Kober and Ted Topping will be happy to oblige at their course next month in Disneyland. Here's how...