Making Magic with Rob Mauldin and Candy Parks

Gary Pageau of the Dead Pixels Society talks with Rob Mauldin and Candy Parks of the MagicMakers Group about company culture, serving customers, how COVID is impacting businesses of all kinds, and ways to adapt.

Rob Mauldin, a founding partner of the MagicMakers Group, focuses on Business Transformation and Experience Development. He was a member of the Disney Cruise Line launch team and was a key executive in the Entertainment organization that led the transformation of Disney's consumer photography service, Disney PhotoPass, at Disney theme parks around the world. After a distinguished 21-year Disney career, Rob founded The MagicMakers® Group with partner and fellow Disney executive Cal Almaguer.

Candy Parks specializes in  Consumer Research and Quantitative Analytics - "Measuring the Magic". She is an accomplished executive with nearly 30 years of experience, in the public, private, and non-profit sectors.

MagicMakers Group is offering a Complimentary Live Webinar, ‘Untold Disney Customer Service Stories’ on Thursday, Oct. 22 from 2:00-3:00 pm ET.  Expect great stories like the Disney Custodial Host seen ‘entertaining’ the guests by drawing a picture of Goofy on the sidewalk using his mop and water.  How many times do you think this image was shared on social media?  Yes, their job was cleaning but their purpose was making people happy.  Those interested can register at www.MagicMakersGroup.com.

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Transcript

Gary Pageau  0:05  
Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau. And today we've got a twofer. We have two people from the MagicMakers Group, a consulting firm to bring Disney magic to your business. First, we're going to be joined by Rob Mauldin, one of the cofounders of the group and Candy Parks, who has insights into consumer behavior. Rob can introduce us to the or introduce yourself to the audience and let us know what we can learn from the MagicMakers Group.

Rob Mauldin  0:39  
Hey, Gary, thanks for having us on. And I really appreciate you having us on for this time. Yeah, let me introduce you to the magic makers group into myself. So my name is Rob Mauldin, I'm the co founder of the magic makers group. We founded the company a couple of years ago with my co founder, Cal Almaguer. Magic makers group is an amalgamation of 20 former Disney executives and experts with over 350 years of Disney tenure, under our belts, and many, many other companies, we help companies with their overall customer experience, we focus in a bunch of different areas, traditional areas that you would think about from the theme park, hotel, cruise line, retail, all of the kind of big businesses you would imagine in kind of the theme park and attraction space. My background as where you and I know each other from is a souvenir photography space. So having spent 21 years at Disney my last 10 years at Disney, I oversaw the Disney photopass business in Florida, California, and then kind of consulted with the other theme parks around the world. So I have a deep knowledge in the in the souvenir photography space. And that's just one of the what we call studios of expertise that the magic makers group brings to various experience businesses throughout the world.

Gary Pageau  2:10  
And Candy, can you share with us a little of your background and what you bring to the party?

Candy Parks  2:14  
Sure, and Hi, Gary, it's nice to meet you. By the way. Rob mentioned that we have Studios of Expertise within the MagicMakers Group and I lead the consumer and employee insights group, which is really a fancy way for saying research. So I do a lot of qualitative and quantitative research to help companies stay in touch with their actual consumers, and who pay for their products or the people they want to pay for their products and services, as well as employees because your employees, especially your frontline employees, are the people closest to your consumers. And therefore they often know things and see things that others don't. So not only tapping into their intellect, but also their engagement. So you know, you can you can retain your good people train them help, and they will help you grow your business. So I spent 17 years at Disney and I did work in pretty much all the business units, I did spend the bulk of my time with Disney Cruise Line. So I'm well acquainted with photography in that standpoint, but I've also worked on photography projects in the parks. And, you know, eight years in private consulting after that, and I kind of often forget my 10 years in public academia, because that research, that research is very different. That's like black, white, whereas in consumer research, there are definitely shades of gray. But I love it because I just get to be honest, I get to be nosy and I get to be honest for living.

Gary Pageau  3:52  
So what's next, a little bit of first Candy on the Employee Resource? I think that's one of the things where businesses, especially larger businesses, can overlook, because there's a lot of action right now in getting consumer feedback or employee feedback acting on it. But is there a way this can be structured in a way to actually make it more useful? Because a lot of the employers that I speak with are just inundated actually, with employee feedback. And not all of it is valuable? Not even all of it is actionable?

Candy Parks  4:29  
Yes, that's a great question. It depends on your business. And it depends on what you want to learn. So one of the key flaws I see in companies that are going out and doing it is they're asking, sometimes they ask questions, they have no intent of asking, you know, acting on don't somebody about their pay and benefits. If you already know you're not going to change their pay and benefits. Don't you know, and because you're just going to frustrate the heck out of them. So good employees So what what we did at Disney is we had a whole systemic approach, and it was tied to the guests. So it was really the focus of the research was around, how can we help you provide the best service possible to guests? Do you have the tools and resources you need? If not, what are they? How is the leadership structure working for you? You know, so it was all about the culture of the environment, the nature, the environment, how teams work together, how leadership plays into that, all in the name of providing excellent service to guess. Right. So that was step one, you know, a big part of it, the other part of it was validating them. So when we started asking, you know, setting up a way for them to bring feedback about the guest experience, not, you know, not just a wine session about, they didn't have this in the cafeteria today. But about, here's my number one challenge I have with my guests, here's the number one thing that if we can fix it, my day would be better. And so with the guests, tapping into those things, which senior leaders often don't see, unless they're walking the walk in the floor, but even when they walk the floor, people don't behave the same way. Right? When you know, so, you know, tapping into employees for what they see and think about the business. And I would say to them, if I could give you a magic one, for five minutes, tell me what you would what you would change, if anything, and just let them go And to your point, 80%, maybe, to blue sky to even think about that you get the nuggets that you can then go back and add, you know, work on that validates your employees, because they're like, wow, and I don't you know, they listen to me, they actually gave me a forum and they listen to me, right? And then when you circle back around and say, here's all the things you told us, and oh, by the way, here's three things we did about it. Right? That just sends a powerful message to our employees.

Gary Pageau  6:53  
So to talk about consumer product development, and Rob, this is something you and I have talked about offline is in the photo space, it's a lot of that's a lot of there's a lot this technology driven, but it's not necessarily driven by what consumers actually want, and actually will purchase. And can you kind of speak to that? When it comes to in like in like in the in the souvenir business, right, where you've got maybe in a cruise line, you're providing a 8X10 print. And that may seem sort of anachronistic and old school, but it's also a very profitable product. And why would you kill your profits for the sake of a technology? So?

Rob Mauldin  7:36  
Yeah, Gary, it's a great question. And whenever we used to look at product development, you always were trying to balance is it? Is it overall, is it good for the business, and to be good for the business, it needs to be good for the customer? Right? There's a very, there's a, there's a clear difference between business centric decision making, and customer centric decision making, right and, and you can make many, many business centric choices that are better for your profitability that are better for your bottom line. But ultimately, if you're not focusing on on customer centric, then it is a long term deficiency for the business. It'll work in the short term. But it won't work in the long term. And one of the reasons that I love working with candy and candy and I've worked together for 20 plus years, we met each other at Disney Cruise Line. Whenever we would make a product decision or a packaging decision, or we would always go back to consumer insights. Right, we would go ask our our folks, kind of what do you want? What are you interested in? What are you hearing about and a cruise ship environments perfect? Because there's there's a steel wall and a moat around the ship. So they're there and you can actually corner them and ask them straight up, kind of what are you interested in? And there was a really robust way to collect information that Candy and her group did that we could ask questions, we could drop in questions to kind of get insights. Because for my, for me, sitting on the business side of the business, get a finite number of resources for technical development, you have a finite amount of resources for kind of your staff, and or your leadership teams to kind of plot the future. And what you don't want to do is get caught in your own echo chamber, where you're listening to things that are very interesting or, or sexy for the moment when augmented reality came out I got like, a million emails about augmented reality about you should do augmented reality, no guidance as to what that meant, how to monetize it, how to apply it to our business, but it was like that was like the the thing of the moment. For us, we actually started in reverse, right, which was, let's Go speak to our customers. And let's go speak to the people that are speaking to our customers, the front line cast members that are listening to their kind of requests their gripes they're kind of I wish it did this or because you're always going to get the Oh, it cost too much, or it's, those are the common ones you're going to hear. But searching for those nuggets .

Gary Pageau  10:23  
Make it cheaper

Rob Mauldin  10:24  
Yeah, just yet make it free, right. It's like, that's the common one, that we would listen to those consumer insights and try to sift out the gold nuggets. So that we could, because it was just as important to know what to do. It was just as important to know what not to do. Right? We didn't want to lose time, we didn't want to burn resources, because we thought something was cool or sexy or interesting or trendy at the moment to do that. So candy is like the, we have a bunch of examples that we've talked about things that we've done from a product standpoint.

Gary Pageau  10:57  
Candy, let's say for example, I am a small retailer, right? And I've got you know, a trading area of five to six miles. I do photo processing, I sell some cameras, I do some portraiture, things like that, you know, what are some of the methods I could employ to get consumer feedback? Because I think it's something that a lot of retailers Don't think about, they look at things like what are people asking me for? or things like that, but I think there's a variety of input mechanisms, like either social media, or, you know, product mix, or things like that.

Candy Parks  11:43  
Yes, another great question. Um, so, if I'm a small retailer, and maybe I don't have time or resources to, you know, bring somebody in whatever, social media is a great tool, because especially now with most platforms, you can put polls up, right? So, and that's very easy, it's very quick, you can get, you know, you can not only get the data, you can get comments, etc, the risk of that I'll tell you is it's not always representative. I mean, if you're based in Nebraska, you don't care what somebody in Canada says about your thing, because the likelihood of them coming to your store is is minimal. So that's the risk of social media. Also, you don't know how old people are, you don't know, if they even own a camera or take pictures with them. You don't know any of that stuff. And that's where, you know, you could get a lot of information, but it may not be useful.

Gary Pageau  12:37  
Yeah. I think is what I'm looking for there. Because you know, people yeah, about our, our, you know, resource constrained, right, they're there. They're working in the business, not on the business that says what I always hear. But there but but because of the decline of the leadership of like an Eastman Kodak in the industry. Now a lot of them are kind of forced to develop their own products. Right, right. And so that should be driven by Consumer need and interest as opposed to I got a new gadget that makes a do Hickey and now I want to sell to do-hickey, it's almost backwards, right? They buy the equipment and then they want to find something they can sell with it. Can you kind of how do you gauge something from the actionability standpoint, right? Because, you know, like Rob said, you can always make it cheaper for people, you're never going to make 100% of the people happy, right? You're never going to do that. So is there a way to look at something and say, This is worth doing? Or this is not worth doing?

Candy Parks  13:37  
In terms of asking the question or in terms of, because I mean, the first thing I always counsel people on is you have to have an objective, you have to know why actually, the information? And and actually, when I work with clients, what I do is we play it all the way out. So what are your objectives? And what are the sample? You know, we then hypothesize What if we learn this, what are you going to do about it? What if we miss what are you going to do about it? And if they can't come up with it, then it's not worth going after? Some of the beneficial work is when you you have those wild hair ideas, but you don't know, you concept test, you go out and you put it in front of actual people who would buy that product? Those are the people you want to talk to the people who are going to try to sell it. Those are the people you want to talk to, to say, Well, yes, this is a great product, but there are no marketing points around it, or it's not sexy to look at or it's you know, whatever the issue is, and then from a consumer standpoint, they may say, yeah, it's really cool. But I have five other gadgets that do that. Why do another one, just like the App Store, you could do app research, you'll learn the same thing. If they can find one to consolidate, then they can drop 15 off their phone.

Gary Pageau  14:53  
So no, no, no. You mentioned something that was kind of interesting, actually. Which was employee buy in right I think that's the other piece of this that I think is missing. Whereas leadership comes up with a product. But the actual frontline people don't buy in.

Candy Parks  15:09  
Oh, I have a great story from this week. My You are so right, because your employees are not only your brand, they're your mouthpiece. So let's see if I can do this without slamming any companies. So I have a neighbor who was having issues with her internet service. And so she's pulling all of us in the cul de sac, who do you use? Who do you use? Who do you use? And I search, right? Yep, yep. And she goes, cuz I called for the third time, and my service guy came out and said, Well, you know what the problem is, is we just don't have good equipment. The employee told her that I can't fix this, because our equipment isn't good enough. And so she switched to our carrier, cause I'm like, I don't have that problem. But he's the one that told her so yeah, if your employees don't buy into it, or if they don't know how to be the right mouthpiece board, or if they're not comfortable being the right mouthpiece, you're sunk.

Gary Pageau  16:09  
But on the other hand, I mean, actually, I find that kind of, I'm gonna say refreshing, but you know, that that, that the employee was actually very candid with a potential customer? I mean, I would actually, you know, almost keep an eye on them to see, are they improving? Are they going to replace equipment? Are they just selling, you know, are these just like, Hey, I'm going to sell you something. And I'm going to toe the company line, and I'm going to try and sell you some whether you you will do the job or not. So that's kind of interesting.

Rob Mauldin  16:36  
Hey, Gary, that's an important point to write. Because when the the whenever we would do product development and business development, in the photo space at Disney, we were very, very tightly aligned with our frontline operations team. Right, we had a weekly meeting that we, which was the we met with every frontline operating manager, and we would bring them into our office to expose them to the developmental roadmap, right? Because we we wanted to, we wanted to bring them along in the journey have the ability to kind of influence the cadence and what we're doing, because and that this ties into kind of what magic makers does, it's about brand promise, and delivering on operational excellence. And I used to say all the time to my frontline operations teams, like, Look, I can only go as fast as you can absorb the work, right? You have to, you have to be a complete supporter of what it is technology needs to work, you need to understand the reason why we're changing our pricing, our packaging, our delivery. And really it was creating, if you didn't have that buy in from your employee group. It could be a serious, it would just slow you down. It's a great accelerator, or it's a great, or it's a terrible governor of how you can make progress.

Gary Pageau  17:56  
Years ago, I was fortunate enough to attend some Disney Institute sessions in Orlando. And that's really where you get an education on that commitment, kind of a top down commitment, because you see some behind the scenes stuff. You see some frontline people and see some of you don't, you know, see the, you know, people characters out there heads off or anything like that. But you certainly you certainly see cast members at all different levels. Right. And that's where I think one of the most impressive things is everyone is on message in the organization. What are some of the ways an organization can reinforce their their message across the various levels? Like you said, you may have the top management who think one thing, and the people who are frontline thinking another and you you want them to be have the same objectives? It seems to me like that that's a constant concern of every organization. And you know, I'm sure that's something that MagicMakers can help an organization with.

Rob Mauldin  18:55  
Yeah, that's another great question, Gary, and it is absolutely something that that magic makers can help with because it's, it's built into the DNA of where we were trained, right, we have someone on our on our group, Michelle Reynolds, who leads kind of the the employee and culture side she ran the Disney University for 10 years that kind of set the role and purpose for a Disney cast member from the first hour that they step on property for their for their training. There. They're explained what their role is, and what their purpose is. Everybody has a role when you're when you're a role in the show, right? From a Disney standpoint, everybody knows you're making hamburgers or you're, you're picking up trash or you're you're interacting with guests or you're a front desk host. That's your role. But everybody is trained that your purpose is to create magic every single day for the guests that come to the park. Right and so Disney trains you, they give you great on the job training and teach you how technically To do your role, but everybody knows purpose trump's role, right? It is that there is there's specific training and permissioning. That if you see if a guest needs your help, if a guest needs recovery, if they if a guest needs guidance, if you need to stop the transaction at the retail counter or walk around from the from the front desk counter, because you need to go help solve a problem and go to a guest room to help figure out a issue. That's your purpose, right? So it's the hit that is a cultural thing, that to kind of provide that permissioning. And that ability to kind of solve those issues like firsthand, and that once once people really understand not only their role, but their purpose, then they take stock in the business, they develop a deep personal responsibility of how they deliver what your product is. And it's just from a job to a career. It's just from a it's just a different level of buying.

Gary Pageau  21:02  
Now in the age of COVID, we've had a reduced enough amount of face to face interactions. Yes, with with people. I mean, obviously, the theme park business is under stress. You know, most entertainment venues are under stress. But hopefully as this opens up, is there anything you can share about In the meantime, about electronic or virtual customer service that could be improved along your lines?

Rob Mauldin  21:34  
Yeah, there's, there's a lot of things that can be done. So we do hope that that the entertainment business and the in the photo business candidly hopes to come back and kind of come back to where we were in 2019. And before, but it is the it is a very difficult situation. And we've all had to put into place, kind of the safety and sanitation necessary things to be able to have those interactions. But from from from a Disney standpoint, we used to train and you probably heard and one of your Disney Institute classes, it's like how to turn a transaction into an interaction, right turn into an interaction has a different level of connection. And you're and you're trying to develop and have an emotional connection with folks. Right. So that that there is there's reasons that Disney that you were a single name name tag that has your hometown on it, right? It creates a an immediate connection to go, oh, Gary, you're from Michigan. I'm from Michigan, it's like I know, people there, where are you from, and it creates those interactive moments where it's not just a transactional moment. So that happens in the digital space as well. Right? The whether it's call centers, or or virtual connections, I think that that's a, there's lots of options to do that. It's like the my daughter just actually interacted with her school yesterday, where she needed to speak to a guidance counselor. And they had set up this very interesting kind of using zoom, where they were actually using zoom breakout rooms to have someone would call in, and she called in, and they would triage her a question, put her into a into a zoom, breakout room, and a guidance counselor would come in and answer her specific question, that that type of kind of entrepreneurship, and the digital space is going on everywhere. Whether it's online chat, or utilizing zoom video. And I think that's a great way to speak to your customers, especially your premium customers, especially your your loyal customers that are long time. Highly, that have that spend a lot with you know, those personal moments users want a quick zoom call. Yes.

Gary Pageau  24:03  
Candy, there's a lot of discussion right now in the general business world about how COVID has affected operations? And do you have any insights into you know, is this an anomaly when if and when COVID passes on saying in sometime 2020 2021 things will get back to normal, then there's always the discussion about the new normal, right that the changes that have happened aren't going away. I had a conversation recently on a previous podcast in the school photography space where someone said, Hey, this, you know, we're doing contactless now forever. We're not going to be interacting with students one to one anymore in the way we used to interact. Is there any insights you can provide on this trend? Is this something that people can anticipate going back to you back to normal or the new normal

Candy Parks  25:01  
Mmm, that's the question of the day, isn't it? So I think what I'm hearing what I'm seeing and stuff I have my fingers in and again, going to people, whether they be business people or consumers, I think it's a little of both, because I think some businesses, for example, are finding incredible efficiencies to the new way they operate. So I think they may keep some of those practices. And then but they're also looking at, but we really want to get back to XYZ, the, the more interesting ones, and I think there may be both a regional and a generational difference. I think there are some people who would very happily go right back to the way things were in 2019, 2018. And I think there are others who say, I mean, and they say, Now, I will always be more cautious than I ever was, you know, I may not always wear a mask, but I'm going to be a lot more conscious of germs spreading. So I think that one thought alone is going to dictate a certain amount of operational impact. I think that differs by industry, I think it differs by location. And that's why you know, whenever we get the question, we just always raise the flag of, you need to make sure you're talking to your consumers. They're the ones who are going to tell you what they're going to tolerate. You want to know what's going on in grocery stores, you need to talk to people who shop in grocery stores,

Gary Pageau  26:29  
...the front line, people who are...

Rob Mauldin  26:31  
who are taken care of and by the way, are also exposed. So it's, you know, this, it's so tempting and times like this and like, and especially with technology and stuff to just try to knee jerk and make a reaction and say, yeah, let's just do it. Right. But now more than ever, is when you need to be tapping into people, because you don't know, you know, what they think may not be what you think. And it depends on your personal situation, have you had anybody close to you be infected? Are you high risk yourself? All of those things impact the way you think. But there's a you need to look at your consumer base. So that's, you know, what are you trying to make, and then you structure your stuff to go figure that out. But you don't take a guess on it, especially something like this, because this has so disrupted, so many people, you know, employers and employees alike. And those scars are going to be there for a long time. And so you've got to be careful. 

With operations that literally stopped moving, right cruise ships stopped, those, the spring school photo season was stopped, it is very hard to test, kind of what those consumer notions are right, that we didn't know, in March in April, kind of how we were going to react to it, it was still it was still a an environment of fear. And no one really knew how to react to it. Now people are starting to sort that out. And so there's I've talked to some folks that have said, I'm going to wait and listen to I'm going to start my operation how it was before. And I'm going to react to that to how things are going. That is that is one approach to kind of evolve. It's kind of an evolutionary approach, right? I do think that COVID has been has is going to create a revolutionary impact for the adoption of technology, right is like, working from home and video calling. And all of the things from a technology standpoint, probably accelerated 10 years in the last five months, right? So in the photo space, there's that whole debate of physical prints and physical products versus digital, and how does that work and apps and technology and how to find efficiencies? Those those conversations have all accelerated, even if it's just around efficiency, right? How do I use tools to edit my photos? How do I use to photo or, or digital tools to create digital storefronts, right, all those efficiency tools, everyone's going to need to look at, look deeply at to figure out how they can kind of make their businesses as efficient as possible. But without losing the personal touch and the artistry of photography. That's it. That's a whole there's an interesting balance and mix on how do you do that?

Gary Pageau  29:29  
Right. Yeah, I think I think the the phrase you use there was the right one in the sense you said accelerated because yeah, I think that you know, from especially in the retail channel that I that I talked to frequently. There's this idea that some of them some some retailers like independence had didn't have apps, they just had websites right. And maybe and and maybe those the offerings, they just offer things they could do in house they weren't outsourcing any different duction while this change that COVID changed that in a hurry, they started having apps, they started having better they started upgrading their website, they started outsourcing, you know, more products, you know, the the gifting stuff that they couldn't do in house like blankets, and, you know, all that kind of stuff. So if they would have gotten there eventually, but COVID accelerated that adoption process. One thing I want to talk, finally about is your upcoming webinar. Can you tell us a little bit about the Oct. 22 event?

Rob Mauldin  30:35  
Yeah, yeah. Coming up on Thursday, October 22. from 2 to 3 pm MagicMakers group, we're going to be hosting a webcast webinar, free complimentary to all, where we're going to be telling untold Disney customer service stories.

Gary Pageau  30:54  
Horror stories because it's Halloween or happy stories?

Rob Mauldin  30:59  
They're going to be Yeah, they're going to span across multiple businesses and multiple genres. Because we have, we have 20 experts, and former executives in our company that have run businesses throughout the Disney ecosystem, we've got six or seven, as we may have, we may throw in a little guest speaker at the end, to kind of tell some stories that that are hotel and resort related. We've got a couple of folks that were executives at ESPN in the innovation space, in the retail and product development space, that are going to talk about the importance of customer service and not just tell stories about these are how we actually deliver on customer service. But we're going to link it back to the why. Why do you do that? Why is that good business? Why? Why does Disney really focus on that, that customer service? And how is that a part of the overall customer experience? So we invite everybody to, you can go to magic makers group comm and sign up. Again, it's free and complimentary. Thursday, October 22, two to 3pm.

Gary Pageau  32:04  
What timezone is that?

Rob Mauldin  32:07  
Oh, that's a great question, Eastern timezone. So we're where we still have Orlando on our brain. So that's its eastern time zone,

Gary Pageau  32:15  
Is that going to be recorded for later consumption? Or do you have to be there and be or be square?

Rob Mauldin  32:20  
Great question, do you do not need to be there, we will record it. And we will post links both on our website, and our YouTube channel. So if you if you are not available to join us, we will send that information out to you.

Gary Pageau  32:35  
As Well guys, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you get a great turnout for Adam and appreciate your insights into the business and how the industry can adapt. Thank you much, Rob, for joining us and candy. Great to meet you. Hopefully we'll see you soon.

Rob Mauldin  32:53  
Thank you. Thanks, Gary. Thanks for having us.