Mike Yankovich and Gretchen Mann from the Children’s Museum of Denver led this enthusiastic discussion about identifying issues with visitor services and how to solve them. This was the most informative and informal workshop of the conference that I attended. Everyone introduced themselves and had to tell what problems or issues they wanted to discuss. If we offered advice the presenters handed out little freebies. I said I wanted to learn about what issues may come up when we open our discovery space. The audience seemed intrigued about a library and museum combo.
The issues that the audience brought up were:
Complaints from staff in front of visitors, Pot stirrers
o Clumping – staff gathering
o Slumping – bored, bad attitude
o Cell phones – texting
o Communication problems between management and floor staff
o Extended breaks, tardiness
o Reprimanding staff
o Recognizing staff and volunteers
o Tracking trainings
Based on votes, the presenters picked: clumping and slumping, tardy staff, cell phone use and pot stirrers.
Clumping:
· Create a theme and have staff facilitate the activity in assigned exhibit areas
· New each week
· Set aside a fun hour – “funtivities” – hula hoops, games
· Identify clumping areas or triggers
· Send staff home and replace with volunteers
· Pair up staff – even number per exhibit – stagger assignments/change pairing during shift
Cell phone use
· No tolerance policy – not allowed on public floor
· During staff meetings gather phones in a basket
· Give cheap watches to staff because they need to keep track of time
Tardy employees
· Point system – start at zero, issue points for bad stuff, at 10 points manager talks to staff person, at 20 points termination
o Points go to zero again at the beginning of the fiscal year
o Can work off point with good behavior/good customer service
· Whentowork.com – a couple of the audience members use this to track scheduling. Most museum employees are part time. Everyone was very excited by the power of scheduling that this website can offer
o Can track number of hours worked, tardies, employees can trade shifts send to supervisors approval, prioritize employees by seniority, you can view message board when staff are looking for coverage, you can tell when they view schedule so they can’t say “I didn’t know I was working that day”
Director of Magic House in St. Louis brought this website up , I’m going to look up Magic House because she seemed to be a really enthusiastic person with good ideas.
Pot stirrers
· Promote them – with higher position they become more responsible and behavior improves – if not fire them
· Give them clean up detail
Communication in organization between all levels
· Hold full staff meeting in the morning, every day
· Big dry erase board calendar – write special events
· Google calendar – share with employees
· At staff meetings have staff do a “this is something I’m doing that you might not know about”
Volunteer and staff recognition
· During Target free Sundays, write special messages on the balloons and hand out to volunteers at the end o f the event – sincere thanks brought back volunteers for next event
· Bulletin board in break room used as a recognition board – customer comments, pics of events
· Volunteers and donors breakfast
· Volunteer of the year gets special free parking space (many of the museums have expensive parking)
· Volunteer program became more competitive – whittled 40 down to 20
o Get field trips i.e. kayaking, visit city garden
· Upwelling memberships – staff gets name in raffle for gift card – weekly prizes
· Star cards for good customer service – name gets entered into raffle – weekly prizes
· Random Act of Slurpee – (Magic House, St. Louis – this director had a lot of great ideas – she has 155 employees)
o Killed slurpee machine – order small not large!
o Reward for working special event
· After Hours events
o Capture the Flag
o Inflatable fooz ball, laser tag games
· Snow ball – everyone writes good comments – flings balls and whoever catches them reads it out
I learned some good information about what our future challenges might be when the second floor opens. Suggestions from the audience were very helpful and provided me with insight into managing frontline staff which we could totally apply to any customer service staff. I thought the group interview technique was a great idea. An audience member said they conduct group interviews so you can observe their interactions with each other and see how they do in team building games. He said to look at the video “Give 'em the pickle” – on YouTube but I'm sort of afraid of what other videos will come up! Important things: Empower your frontline staff with the power to say yes and make sure staff use positive tones and phrasing “your best option is" instead of saying no.
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