“Getting an audience is hard. Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.” –Bruce Springsteen
No matter what type of venue we work in—whether it is a 1,500-person club, a 50,000-person stadium, or a 80,000-music festival—as venue operators, we all share the same goal: to deliver the world’s greatest guest experience for our fans attending the event. Whether you are a performer on stage or the first baseman for an MLB team, we all have a role in delivering that experience.
At Nationals Park, we recognized a culture needed to be developed that unified all our game day team members (over 2,700) that instilled passion and pride that everyone is part of the Nationals family. Our goal was to find a way to connect our staff with our guests for every event we hosted, so they would continue to come back every time. Every guest we seated, every cash transaction, every car we parked, and bag we search is an opportunity for our staff to make a memorable and lasting impression for our guests. How do you teach your team the importance of this?
TEAM Service was developed to create a culture of service excellence for all Nationals Park game day team members regardless of the company they work for. We are one unified team whose members work together to satisfy and delight our guests, creating a memorable experience for each and every one. Part of this commitment to our guests is that we expect all team members, regardless of their individual department or company, to go above and beyond to satisfy our guests and handle any conflict with care and respect for the individual. Do you have a program that all departments are a part of, that your game day team is a part of?
As we are building our program and still continue to improve it everyday, we hold monthly meetings with the 12 different department managers that make up our different game day staff departments consisting of:
• Guest Experience team
• Box Office team
• Ticket Services team
• 50/50 team
• Grounds crew
• Scoreboard team
• Tour Guides
• Food and Beverage team
• Parking team
• Security team
• Housekeeping team
• Entertainment team
It is important that in our monthly meetings we are asking questions of what is working well and what we need to improve upon. We speak directly with our game day team, listening to what they are looking for and what we can improve upon as leaders, too. In defining this program, it was more than just an awards and recognition program, but creating a family, with a mission statement, core values, and logo that were separate, but aligned with our organization’s core values. We created a game day staff brand.
Our logo, mission statement, powerful quotes, and core values are in our game day staff entrance (called the TEAM Service entrance), every break room, our training programs we call “work shops” and “Spring Training,” and some of our rewards such as length-of-service pins and MVP awards. By creating this brand, we were able to see our guest comments rise and our guests becoming apart of our TEAM Service rewards and recognition program where they vote for the MVPs of the Year. How do you reward and recognize your team?
We continue to find new ways to create that service excellence we all strive for, but remember that each time our game day staff are in the building to recognize them for going above and beyond the call of duty to help deliver the world-class guest experience we want for every event.
(Image: Joseph Gruber/Creative Commons)
