Disney,  In My Life,  Work

Reflecting on a Year in Guest Relations

As you may have seen by my recent instagram post, I recently celebrated my one year anniversary of working at Guest Relations!

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On March 26 of 2017 I began my journey with Guest Relations and it’s been filled with so many great memories already!! I’ve written about my path in GR here on my blog as it has unfolded and it’s hard to believe that it’s been a whole year already. I feel extremely lucky to have a job in which I feel challenged to my fullest potential nearly every day.

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A lot of people see Guest Relations as “the complaint department” and to be fair, we kind of are sometimes. I have seen some of the most unbelievable guest situations in GR that I wouldn’t believe were true if I hadn’t seen them myself!

But being in this role has also helped me grow exponentially and I feel like a whole new cast member as compared to myself a year ago. I was a little hesitant and even a little afraid of the whole thing before I started, but I’ve developed a lot of confidence in myself when it comes to making decisions and being able to solve any problem that gets thrown at me. It’s such an empowering job as well – we really have the power to completely turn a situation around and make people happy.

In a role that focuses so much on solving guests’ problems, I’ve learned that many times people just want to be listened to. I’ve had a lot of situations that start out with a very upset guest that ended with them thanking me – they truly just wanted to feel like someone cared about whatever challenge they were going through.

Perhaps the biggest thing I’ve learned in this job is the importance of empathy. Probably the most vital part of my role is being able to empathize with the guest. Sometimes it’s easy to look at every situation cynically and feel like people are trying to con us or whatever but at the end of the day it’s my job to make people happy, and I try to do that. Being in Guest Relations is definitely challenging but it’s also extremely rewarding, and I love the positive influence that I can have on people’s vacation.

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I know that I won’t stay in GR forever as new opportunities arise for me in other places, but it’s been a great year and I really feel extremely grateful for everything I have learned here. I’m so thankful for the amazing team I have at Epcot (and also for the skills I learned and people I met at MK!) and I’m excited to see what else I can do in the future 🙂 Thank you for reading today’s post and also for following along with my GR journey! If you haven’t read about how I got here and all the bumps in the road along the way, I’ve written a lot about it previously so feel free to catch up 🙂 Until next time!

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