Vegas could learn a few things about customer service

Neil Schwartz, Las Vegas

Saturday, June 5, 2010 | 2:01 a.m.

I recently returned from a week in Maui, Hawaii, and read the Las Vegas Sun’s Sunday article on customer service, “Friendly and clean sure beat out mean.” You want to learn about customer service, then just spend a week in Maui. We stayed at the Hyatt Regency and ate at top restaurants.

You can’t compare the service we got there with what we get in Vegas. As a local, we stay at the top hotels and eat at the top restaurants and the service is not even close to Maui’s. They get it. They take aloha to the max. We need to take Vegas to the max. It should not matter what the economy is, service should always be the top priority.

I would suggest that all of the top executives here enroll in Disney University, an incredible program run by the Walt Disney Co. that teaches how to give great customer service to tens of thousands of people around the world every day.

One of the things I learned when I attended one of their courses to increase my customer service is that they look at each person who goes through the turnstile into one of their parks as worth $50,000 over the life of the visitor. Great motivation? You bet. If the customers keep coming back, the employees know they will still have a paycheck.

The bottom line is the service culture that is instilled in the workers. At Disney, the employees are there to please and seem to get great pleasure pleasing.

Las Vegas, take note.