Guest Experience & Sustainability Strategy
Big crowds test the limits of any operation
Smart venues find ways to focus their energy on the best opportunities to mesh business goals with guest wishes
Getting thousands of people together at once can overwhelm the best.
Having a clear sense of the journey your guests are on and how that journey interacts with your operating teams and vendors is the first step toward creating consistent, repeatable processes and preparing staff and infrastructure to handle the onslaught. Solid processes and preparation can enable you to wow your most important guests and find opportunities to make the experiences you deliver better for the planet.
Here’s how I can help
Guest Journey Mapping & Strategy
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Identify key segments of guests to set the lenses through which to view the operation through key guests’ eyes.
Carefully map out the journey of typical members of each segment, from purchase to access to in-venue to departure and post-event engagement.
Use the map to identify pain points and areas in which different departments are working at cross purposes or could be better coordinated.
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Understand operations managers’ views on data and motivators and barriers to using it.
Align organizational coordination structures to stages of the guest journey, to ensure that the right managers are talking to each other while ensuring that everyone is judiciously using their limited bandwidth.
Establishing structures that create greater accountability for being responsive to trends in what guests are telling you.
Case Study - Oracle Park
Brought ops & experience managers together to make better use of data
A huge amount of guest experience data and dedicated operations managers, but limited bandwidth and limited fluency in using data to inform operations. Working with the business analytics department, created structures around common points in the guest journey and worked closely with key managers to make data more accessible and actionable.
Hospitality Strategy Development
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Develop clarity on the core identity of the venue’s hospitality program, including food and beverage calling cards and service standards.
Work with stakeholders to ensure that a new hospitality vision meaningfully influences the day-to-day delivery of experiences.
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Understand and ground-truth the implications of revenue goals and the ticket-product decisions they inform.
Bring stakeholders together to test feasibility and build out the infrastructure and staffing needed to effectively deliver on ambitious hospitality goals.
Identify opportunities to generate further value by delivering experiences that go above and beyond.
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Develop frameworks for effectively keeping tabs on the complicated work of delivering a food & beverage program while letting the experts within the concessionaire team do what they do best.
Develop clear incentives for improving the quality of the food and beverage program, beyond natural financial incentives that typically drive decision-making and performance.
Develop structures for ensuring that the food & beverage program is strategically responsive to other internal pressures (e.g. sponsorships/partnerships).
Case Study - Oracle Park
Capital planning for premium spaces, centered on business goals & guest wishes
An ambitious vision for serving premium guests in new ways in an aging ballpark and with constrained capital. Brought key teams together and brought the food & beverage team directly to the table to align on an updated vision and achievable roadmap for delivering improvements.
Experience-Delivery Change-Management
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Identifying opportunities to get food & beverage leaders to the table at the right time for capital planning and prioritization decisions.
Ensuring that capital plans are informed by both a clear understanding of the envisioned experience and the limits of existing infrastructure and staffing.
Evaluating potential investments against stated priorities and partner imperatives.
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Identifying the business case for specific opportunities to make the operation more environmentally sustainable.
Frameworks for engaging the right stakeholders to ensure everyone is comfortable with changes in the operation and can effectively deliver a more sustainable operation in a way that maintains or elevates the guest experience.
Establishing key performance indicators and setting processes for learning from and responding to data to improve or adjust sustainability-driven changes.
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Structures for bringing together the right people to establish a service vision and ensure leadership for implementation.
Developing service standards rooted in organizational values and event staff perspectives.
Frameworks for introducing new service standards to staff and embedding new standards in culture.
Case Study - Oracle Park
Strategy & execution for the largest reusable cup program in North America
Hundreds of thousands of single-use plastic cups and a reputation for being forward-thinking on sustainability. Developed a strategy for piloting the use of reusable cups, implemented in part of the ballpark, and expanded to the full venue after a successful first year.