When you think about customer experience, there is one company that often comes to mind: Disney. And if you’ve been to Disney World or Disneyland, you know exactly what that means.

Doug Lipp, former head of training at Disney University, told the crowd at Tuesday’s General Session that things like corporate mission statements and value statements don’t really do much to enhance customer experience—it’s important to realize that what happens backstage can have a big impact on what happens onstage.

“Platitudes and quotes mean nothing unless you back it up with action,” he said. “I want you to think about what’s going on backstage in your stores, backstage in your office and how that eventually rolls out onstage—whether that stage is in the store, on the internet, over the telephone or however it happens.”

Lipp shared a powerful story of Snow White at Disneyland comforting an autistic girl, who had been overwhelmed by the music and lights during a princess meet-and-greet and fled the auditorium where it was happening. Snow White followed the girl and her parents outside and, while staying in character, simply knelt beside the uncommunicative little girl without saying a word until the girl realized who was standing next to her. The tears stopped and were replaced by smiles and the little girl was able to go back inside and enjoy her princess experience.

“You can talk about magic, you can have all the characters you want, you can have aspirations and dreams, but it takes a lot of hard work to get a Snow White character to be able to do that,” he said. “You can have motivational posters up, you can have all the training in the world, but I want you to think about in your stores and your teams, internal to your company and external to your paying customers, how do you recover when things don’t go according to plan?”

Lipp offered up a three-pronged approach: Hire the right people, train them right and treat them right. And, he said, just keep it simple.

“You put all that together in the package of your culture and that’s how you differentiate,” he said. “And nowhere in there is there a famous character. It’s really simple.”