How to Make Your Business Easier to Do Business With

DOA: My Bank Bragged About Its Shiny New ATM, Then Hid It Behind a Brick Wall

One-Sentence Summary: Most service businesses are built for the owner’s convenience instead of the client’s, and the fastest way to find that hidden friction is to walk through your own business as a stranger and mark every brick wall you hit.

Another body rolled into the Crypt this week: a bank that bragged about its new ATM, then hid it behind a brick wall.

One of the two banks in my little town on the Eastern Shore got a new ATM. In a town this size, that’s front-page news. These two banks fight over us like seagulls over a french fry, so the proud one did what any proud parent does. It stuck a sign out on the main road: Come see our new ATM.

So I did.

I drove around the building, parked, and walked into the vestibule where the old ATM used to live. A brand-new brick wall was waiting for me. Nice work, too. Fresh mortar and everything.

No ATM. Just bricks.

That was the first symptom. The cause of death showed up about five minutes later, sitting in a drive-through lane.

Quick Answer: How do I make my business easier to do business with?

Run a customer experience audit by walking through your own business the way a first-time client would. Call your own phone line after hours. Fill out your own contact form. Find your own front door. Write down every moment you have to stop and figure something out, because that’s friction, and friction is where buyers quietly quit. Then ask your front-line employees which questions clients ask over and over. Every one of those spots exists for your convenience, not the client’s. Disney found its version at Animal Kingdom, where a hub with no directional signs and a misleading name left guests lost. It added signs and renamed the hub. Your fix starts with the same audit and one service standard for each brick wall you find.

Key Takeaway: If a client has to ask how to do business with you, you’ve already made it harder than it should be.

Executive Summary

A local bank promoted a new ATM, removed the old walk-up machine, and installed the new one in a drive-through lane it shares with the live teller window. Customers who just want cash now wait behind customers who don’t. The bank built something for its own convenience and advertised it as a customer upgrade. That’s a Service Standards failure, one of the seven magic keys I wrote about in my book Systematic Magic. Disney made a similar mistake when Animal Kingdom opened in 1998 and fixed it. Professional and home service firms make it every day with phone trees, contact forms, intake packets, and invoices that make sense to the owner and nobody else.

Quick Facts

• The bank advertised its new ATM on a roadside sign, then walled off the old walk-up location.

• The new ATM sits in a drive-through lane behind the live teller window.

• Three cars ahead of me were waiting for the teller, not the ATM.

• Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened with a central hub called Safari Village. The safari wasn’t in it.

• Disney added directional signs and renamed the hub Discovery Island.

Key Data

• Proprietary (DSNI 4,000-call study): Only 18% of calls to service businesses reached a live person. Just 7% of voicemails got a callback, and only 7% of calls routed through AI ever connected to a human.

• External: Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened April 22, 1998, with its hub land operating as Safari Village, and Safari Village was renamed Discovery Island in December 2000. (Source: The Mickey Wiki, citing D23) themickeywikithemickeywiki

What Happened

I can’t drive past a sign without the Five Man Electrical Band’s “Signs” kicking on in my head. The 1971 original. The Tesla cover can stay in 1990 where it belongs.

But I digress.

So there I am, standing in the vestibule, staring at a wall. I go inside and ask the teller, “Where’s this new ATM? There’s only a wall out there.”

She lit up like I’d just asked her about her grandkids. “It’s outside! On the other side of the teller window! IT’S A DRIVE-THROUGH!”

She said it with the energy of a teenager who just spotted Paul McCartney at the mall. I honestly thought she might need a change of pants.

Fine. I got back in my car and drove around to the drive-through.

One problem. Actually three of them.

There were three cars in line, and every one of them was waiting for the live teller. To get anywhere near the shiny new ATM, I had to sit behind people making deposits, cashing checks, and asking about lollipops for the kids in the back seat. None of them wanted the machine. All of them were between me and it.

What knucklehead designed this? Which nincompoop looked at the blueprints and said, “Yep, put the fast thing behind the slow thing”?

Somewhere in that bank, there’s a Service Prevention Department, and this week it won Employee of the Month.

The Pivot: Your Building Has a Brick Wall Too

Here’s where the laughing stops, because you’ve got one of these.

Maybe it isn’t made of bricks. Maybe it’s the phone tree that makes a new prospect press 4 to reach “new client inquiries,” then dumps him into voicemail. My own 4,000-call study found only 18% of calls to service businesses reached a live human. That’s your drive-through lane. The prospect who wanted to hire you today is sitting behind the people who called to reschedule. I’ve written about the invisible version of this problem before, an emergency room with a yellow line nobody could see. The bank just built theirs out of bricks.

Maybe it’s the contact form that asks for eleven fields before anyone will talk to him. The parking lot with no sign telling clients which door is yours. The intake packet that reads like a mortgage closing. The invoice nobody outside your bookkeeper can decode.

Every one of those was built for the business. Your scheduling, your workflow, your liability, your convenience. Then you put up a roadside sign telling the world how easy you are to work with.

The cost is brutal and invisible. A confused buyer doesn’t call to complain that your website was a maze. He just doesn’t buy. You never see the referral that didn’t happen, or the client who renewed with somebody else. Confusion doesn’t show up on your P&L as a line item. It shows up as a number that should’ve been bigger.

“My clients are smart. They’ll figure it out.”

I hear this one all the time, usually from attorneys and financial advisors who are very proud of their clients’ intelligence.

Sure. Your clients are smart. Smart enough to know they have other options.

Smart people hate feeling stupid more than anybody. Make a CPA’s client hunt for the right upload portal, and he doesn’t think, “What a fun challenge.” He thinks, “Why is this so hard?” And the next question in his head is, “What else is going to be this hard?”

Your clients can figure it out. The question is whether they should have to, and whether they’ll stick around long enough to bother.

Proof: The Day Disney Admitted It Got Lost in Its Own Park

When Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened, the vision was adventure. Let guests explore. Let them discover. No hand-holding.

So there were no directional signs telling you how to get anywhere. You’d just wander until you found something.

To make it even more confusing, the center of the park was called Safari Village. Makes sense, right? Guests walked up to cast members in Safari Village and asked where to catch the safari.

The safari wasn’t in Safari Village. It was over in the Africa section of the park.

(This seemed logical at the time. So did Pleasure Island. Let’s pour a few beers into sunburned, dehydrated, exhausted guests at midnight and see what happens. What could go wrong?)

None of it worked. None of it worked. Guests didn’t feel adventurous. They felt lost, and they were annoyed about it. A lost guest doesn’t spend money..

What I learned in my decade as a Walt Disney World leader is that when Disney screws something up, it learns faster than anybody alive. It listens to guests. It doesn’t defend the original vision because some Imagineer loved it.

So Disney installed directional signs. And Safari Village got a new name. The official history also ties the name to the old Discovery Island on Bay Lake, which had closed in 1999. But anybody who watched guests wander that hub asking for a safari that wasn’t there knew the old name had to go. Safari Village became Discovery Island. Done.

The most famous experience company on the planet looked at its own creative vision, saw that it confused paying guests, and threw it out. Your fancy intake process isn’t more sacred than that.

Systems Over Heroics

Most businesses fix confusion with a hero. The friendly receptionist who walks every lost client from the elevator to the right suite. The bank teller who explains, with real joy, where the ATM went.

Heroes are great. They also call in sick.. The teller explaining the drive-through to every confused customer is a band-aid on a design problem. You’re paying an employee to apologize for a wall.

A service standard fixes it once. Disney didn’t train every cast member in Safari Village to give better directions. It put up signs and changed the name. The system did the work so the people didn’t have to.

Here’s the test I use to sort your brick walls from your signs:

If a touchpoint lives in the left column, it’s a brick wall. If you’re relying on a great employee to explain it, it’s still a brick wall. It just has a nice person standing in front of it.

If you suspect your rules are the problem rather than your building, read about the farmer who refused my cash 90 minutes before closing in What Is a Sales Prevention Department? It’s the same disease with a different address.

Recommended Actions If This Were My Business

Monday: Call your own business as a new prospect. From your cell, after hours, and again at lunch. Write down every moment you felt stuck.

Tuesday: Ask your team one question at the morning huddle: “Where do clients get confused?” Your front desk already knows. They’ve been answering the same three questions for years.

Wednesday: Walk your website and your physical location like a first-timer. Count how many decisions a new client has to make before he talks to a human.

Thursday: Pick the single worst brick wall on your list. Not five. One. Decide who owns fixing it and by when.

Friday: Rename something. A service package, a form, a step in your process. If clients keep asking what it means, the name is wrong, just like Safari Village.

FAQs

What is a service prevention department?
It’s my name for every rule, process, or physical structure that exists for the business’s convenience and gets in the way of serving the client. It’s a close cousin of the sales prevention department. Nobody creates either one on purpose. They grow on their own when nobody checks.

How do I mystery shop my own business?
Go through every step a new client takes, from finding you online to paying the first invoice, using a phone and email address your team won’t recognize. Note every delay, dead end, and unanswered question. Then fix the worst one first.

Why don’t clients just tell me when something’s confusing?
Most won’t. They’d rather leave quietly than admit they couldn’t figure something out. Silence isn’t a sign your process works.

What’s a service standard?
A service standard is a defined, repeatable rule for how your business treats clients, so the experience doesn’t depend on who happens to be working that day. It’s one of the seven magic keys in my book Systematic Magic.

What is customer friction?

Customer friction is anything that makes a client work harder than necessary to buy from you, reach you, or stay with you. Confusing phone trees, long intake forms, unclear invoices, and hard-to-find entrances all count. Clients rarely complain about friction. They just leave.

The Verdict

That bank spent real money on a new ATM, real money on a brick wall, and real money on a sign begging people to come see it. Then it parked the whole thing behind three cars waiting for a teller.

Dead on arrival. The machine works fine. The experience never had a pulse.

Go find your brick wall before your clients do. They won’t tell you they found it. They’ll just stop coming around to look.

Want the Signs Already Built?

Every month, my Inner Circle members get the XP Report and a live coaching call where I hunt down exactly this kind of service prevention in real businesses. Right now you can try it free for 30 days, and I’ll send you the Disnify Your Business Toolkit as a free gift. You just cover shipping.

Grab it at vancemorris.com/toolkit.