Disney’s IVR – Pooh on Customer Service

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I make my way down to Disney World for the Food and Wine Festival every year, and this year, I was joined by family and friends.  If I felt Disney did everything wrong from a customer service standpoint, I would not vacation there so often.

Their IVR system, however, continues to aggravate me.

I first wrote about my frustration with the Disney Resort reservation line in an earlier CustomerManagementIQ.com article.  They still ask me how many times I have visited and other personal information and then ask me many of the same questions (like they don’t even know me) when I finally get to an agent.

When I call Disney Dining reservations to get simple information about hours of operation, I am met with a series of needless questions and, ultimately, don’t even get the information I seek.  Instead, I get a description of the restaurant.  Why make it so hard?  This is an opportunity to develop a relationship with one of your best customers and a long-time advocate!

The most frustrating experience on my recent trip began at Disney Hollywood Studios when six of us decided to try and get a reservation at the Grand Floridian Café.

Let’s set the stage.

It’s about 11:50 AM and the group wanted to go to Magic Kingdom in the afternoon.  I suggested lunch at the Grand Floridian Café, one of my favorite places, and I would call to make sure we could get in.  I called the Disney Reservations line and encountered the Disney IVR system, my nemesis.  There are many things I dislike about IVR systems in general, but I find Disney’s maddening.

Why?  You know you are talking to a fake person and the technology tries to be so cute.  But that is not the worst of it.  Instead,  it is all the unnecessary information they add in and the pleading to take an “after call survey” – a survey that asks what they want to know rather than what matters to me, the customer.

What should take about 3 minutes to accomplish - securing a reservation - takes at least 5 minutes to navigate the menu if you are lucky.  It sounds like Disney wants to reduce their costs and not optimize my time.

Back to the call.  I started the call at 11:55AM and I made it through the first series of questions and was rewarded with two times 1:10 PM and 1:50 PM.  I choose the 1:10 reservation time (we were all hungry or “rumbly in my tumbly” as Pooh would say).  After a series of mostly useless information about high chairs, gratuity and other trivial (and unnecessary information), the trouble began . . . the IVR wanted my name.

IVR:  Please both say and spell your last name (like this . . .)

Me: Babbitt B-A-B-B-I-T-T

IVR:  I didn’t quite get that, can you say this again please

Me: Babbitt B-A-B-B-I-T-T

IVR:   . . . I need to get you with an agent to help you (or similar message).

By the time, I got to an agent it was 12:14 PM.  My only option was now 1:50 PM as the reservation has to be made at least an hour before the reservation time.  So, the 1:10 PM time was not an option.  I booked the 1:50 PM time and was fuming over the time I had just wasted to make a simple reservation.

IVRs have been put in place to save money for large corporations for years now and in some circumstances they are helpful.  However, when customers bring variety of demand to an IVR, this technology cannot absorb variety.  The inability to absorb variety leads to failure demand (demand caused by a failure to do something or do something right for a customer –Seddon) or leads to people like me and my entire party wondering why Disney doesn’t value our relationship.

In service, when demands placed on organizations have great variety, IVRs become a barrier to service.  Only people can absorb this variety and get to all the demands that a customer wants to place on a service system.  Let me talk to a person that can listen to my demands and give me intelligent options and answer my questions. 

Every other pathetic service organization uses an IVR and frustrates me.  But Disney, a worldwide leader in service, should stand taller and be better.

Giving customers what they want in a timely fashion, with all the relevant information included, will bring more customers and profit.  The IVR, however, is just sucking the life out of your customers amid increasing costs in technology and failure demand.

As for Disney, they are losing higher priced meals (table service) to lower-priced meals (counter service or - worse - off-property restaurants).  These are the costs that the bean counters can’t see, but they are both real and damaging to the reputation of any service organization.

Looking to cut costs in your call center without resorting to poor technological alternatives that anger your customers?  The best strategies for EFFICIENT customer care will be unveiled at the 7th Call Center Summit!

Convoluted (notably dead-end) IVR systems were ranked as one of the “7 Clues Your Organization Doesn’t Value Customer Service.”  What else ranks?

Contributor:   Tripp Babbitt

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Babbitt's background in continual improvement, Lean and Six Sigma with banks (Tier 1 to Tier 3), healthcare, government (federal and state) and many other industries has kept him looking for effective new methodologies for service. His encounter in 2005 with Vanguard started as an intellectual exchange and culminated in his partnership with them. He describes the partnership as "a better method to improvement and sustainability for service organizations through better thinking and not tools."

Babbitt writes a blog called, The No Tool Zone (blog.newsystemsthinking.com), he maintains a website
(www.newsystemsthinking.com) and is in the process of writing a book aimed at changing thinking for service organizations. He holds an MBA (University of Evansville and a BA from Hanover College). Babbitt can be reached at tripp@newsystemsthinking.com.

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