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THE QUESTION: I’m planning a visit to your park, but my husband is a bit on the heavier side and wants to make sure he can join in on the family fun. Does your park have any weight restrictions?
PARK 1, FL
First Contact: Female.
API: Stated question.
Staff: Uh, we don’t have a weight restriction, but our harness will fit up to a size 48-inch waist. So… (Silence…)
API: OK. So there’s no weight limit? It’s basically the person’s size?
Staff: Yes. (Silence…)
API: Alright, well I’m pretty confident his waist is not that size, but I will double check. And so then he can participate in everything that you guys have?
Staff: Yes. (Silence…)
API: Alrighty then, thanks for your help.
1 Comment
This is an interesting article covering customer service, and potentially a useful assessment of customer service styles and responses. However, it is always easy to be enthusiastic for a guest if they can go on the tour be it because they are under the weight limit or size limit. It is much more difficult to enforce a size or weight rule in a way that is upbeat and enthusiastic. Guests who call for reservations typically want to go, and telling them they can not go is hard for the guest to hear and for the customer service staff to relay. This would have been much more useful if API had consistently adjusted the fictitious guests’ weight to just always be right over or right around the weight limit or waist size limit. That way each customer service agent would be dealing with the same issue, how do you politely let the guest know that they may not be able to go on the tour. That is a customer service challenge. Telling a guest they can go is pretty easy. the way in which this was written many of the customer service agents had the easy job of saying “sure you can go!” – admittedly some did it more enthusiastically than others, but the point of the article seems missed if only some agents are confronted with a guest who is in fact “on the heavier side” according to each courses definition of that statement.