This is a recorded session from the 2025 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. Learn how two museums built trust within their communities by refining visitor engagement standards and examining the employee experience. Gain insights into how the museums’ revamped standards resulted in measurable improvements, such as increased visitor satisfaction and heightened community trust. Explore how to design experiences for employees that create a trusting environment, and participate in exercises that shed light on visitors’ perspective. Leave with a clear, personalized roadmap for improving trust within your own institution.
Speakers:
- Christie Dentry, Guest Engagement Manager, Utility Exploration Center
- Jenny Rydeen, Head of Visitor Experience, Minneapolis Institute of Art
Additional Resources:
Slides from Creating Trust through Exceptional Visitor Engagement & Employee Experience
Transcript
Christie Dentry:
We are here to talk about the intersection between visitor engagement and employee experience and how that builds trust. I’m going to go ahead and we’re going to introduce ourselves and then we’re going to go ahead and get started. My name is Christie Dentry. I handle our guest services, our employee training. I supervise our part-time on-the-floor staff, and I work at the Utility Exploration Center. And it’s a unique place where we talk about resource conservation and environmentalism through the lens of utilities. And yes, I said utilities. So, what happens when you flush the toilet? Where does your garbage go? Where does your drinking water come from? So, we look at all of those questions and then focus on sustainability and resource management.
So, a little bit about us. We are a science museum. We do programs from we say 0 to 99. We do programs of a center and schools. We focus on our utilities and sustainability. So, we look at the behind-the-scenes stories of our utilities and we share them with our community, the rate payers, and we get to tell those stories of all of the different jobs that our utilities do and how important they are to our community. We are free museum, so we are completely free. Everyone can come in and we don’t charge for hardly any of our programs. We’re very lucky in that circumstance. There are only a couple which we charge a nominal fee for, but for most everything else, we are completely free. And our staff create exceptional experiences and we’re going to talk a lot about those experiences and how our staff impact our visitor engagement and their employee engagement as well. I’m going to go ahead and introduce Jenny.
Jenny Rydeen:
Hi everyone, I’m Jenny Rydeen, head of visitor experience at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. And have any of you ever been able to visit Mia? I know a couple. Yes. Yay. So exciting. Well, I hope you get to come there. A little bit about us, we are an art museum as you maybe have figured out from the name. But our collection is global. We have over 100,000 objects. It’s comprehensive, and similar to Christie, our museum is free, which we absolutely love and the visitor experience team being able to share free admission. Our vision is to inspire wonder through the power of arts. We really think about that as our work inspiring wonder, and we firmly believe that the way to create outstanding visitor experiences is by designing really exceptional employee experiences. And that’s what we’ll talk about more today. So, you had some practice with Slido in the pizza toppings question and would love for you to respond. How do you define trust in a museum setting?
Christie Dentry:
So, since we’re here to talk a little bit about trust and how it is impacted by our visitor engagement and employee engagement and experience, how would you define trust as a museum? Consistency, transparency, a lot about communication and safety. Authentic. Apologizing when wrong, that’s huge. You guys are experts. So, a lot of these are focusing around open communication and being transparent and being consistent with the experience, the experience for both your visitor and for your employee. Inclusive, I love that. Authenticity, respect. We’ll let these couple more finish. Awesome.
Yeah, so transparency is huge and we’re going to talk a little bit about that today. So, I’m glad you brought that up. So how we define trust in terms of this exercise and what we’re going to present today. Yes, it is Friday afternoon, and I just put a math equation up on the board, I apologize. There will be more math equations so get ready. Luckily, there are history math equations, you guys will be fine. But we define trust as visitor and staff experiences over time, because if any of you have had a bad customer service experience or a bad experience at a museum or anywhere really, one may not be a trust breaker, but if you have multiple over time, that starts to erode the trust that your customer has in you, or from the employee’s stance, if you have a bad situation with an employee or a really positive situation, some of those can be trust building and some of those can be trust breaking.
So, we’re going to look at that over a journey map. And what you have in front of you is a blank version of what I’m going to explain. Who has heard of a guest journey map before? Good, few of you. Who has their own guest journey map as an institution? Sweet. You guys are in the right place. You are going to have one by the time you leave here. So, the more you participate, the more you’re going to get out of it. But basically, this is the map that any one of your customers goes on from the moment they think about entering your museum to the moment that they create memories or decide to return.
So, we have broken up this map into five different stages, decision, entry, engagement, exit, and commitment. And so, I’m going to go through each one of these because you guys will be creating your own journey map and then hopefully sharing it with a buddy or a partner next to you. But we’re going to talk about it and help you build that out so that when you leave here, you can have this to share with your staff and be able to create one with your own staff.
So even before they decide to visit your museum, they’re figuring out what you’re all about. You have so many touch points that your guest experiences before they even walk through the door. So, they may have heard of you from a website, they may have heard or seen a radio ad or a print ad or liked you on Instagram or saw a TikTok. Each one of those experiences are touch points that you have with your customer, and they can either build or erode trust. The best one would be word of mouth. If you have somebody that’s had a positive experience and they’re now bringing in a neighbor or a friend, that is the best way to learn about your organization or your institution.
So, they’ve made the decision to go. Now, they have to enter. And pictures say a thousand words or whatever the saying is. Every single one of these touch points communicates with your visitor something about your organization. So, they get to your organization and there’s no parking or the parking’s a nightmare or they’re circling around. That says something about your institution. Are they able to find your entrance? Do you share a building with somebody? Is the signage accurate? And is there enough of it? What does the lobby look like as you enter? Is it clean? Are there staff present? Is it hectic? And then, is there somebody to welcome them in? And what is that experience like?
Once they enter, the engagement is the most important piece. And this is where your employees shine. A good employee can make or break your engagement, can make or break a visitor experience. And so, looking at that first staff interaction, was it pleasant? Were they smiling? Was it genuine? And then, your interpretation. So, is there somebody giving live interpretation? What are your exhibits like? Are they clean? Are they broken? Do they make sense? Any of your exhibits, so one of your visitors might have a different experience in one exhibit versus the other. And what does that look like and what do those touch points and exhibits communicate to that visitor? And then, of course external programming. So, looking at those points of engagement and every single one of these tells a story to your visitor about your institution and how well you’re doing and whether or not they’re going to make an effort to return.
So, they’ve had a great time at your museum, now they want to buy something to make a memory. So, what does your gift shop look like? Do you have things in your gift shop that relate to your mission? Do you have things in there that spark a memory of their visit? Did somebody say goodbye to them? Were they greeted on the way out? And what do your restrooms look like? Were there paper towels all over the floor? Was it messy? Were there too few stalls? So, all of those things make an impression, and especially on the way out, they’ve had this great experience and now they enter the restroom and it’s like, oh no, I don’t want to go in there. And so, it leaves a bad taste.
The most important piece is the commitment aspect. So, from your exhibits, are they going to take action? Is there going to be something that they learned and are going to change their behavior based on what they learned? Did they create memories, and will they return? So, this is a very basic guest journey map. A lot of journey maps have many more points. This breaks it up into five really easy steps and it is a great start. The best thing about this is that you can do this for your entire organization. So, you can do this for your entire museum. You can break it down by exhibit. So, you can create a guest journey map by exhibit, by program, by pretty much anything.
The best part about it is you can even break it down by demographics. You can make a guest journey map based on a very specific demographic and their experience because each demographic has a very different experience in your museum depending on what they’re bringing in. So, any questions based on this before we get into the activity? So, what I would like you to do, I’m going to give you an example of this and I’m going to fly through this pretty quickly because I’m tired of talking at you. I want you guys to actually do some activity.
So, I’m going to go through an example of one of the demographics that my staff and I did. We use this in a training. This is in our customer service training, and this is a real live sample of really what they came up with. This was for a Storytime STEM mom. So that is our demographic. That’s a program that we offer on any given Wednesday where we will have anywhere from 250 to 368. And I say 368 because after 250, each number after that feels like 10 little bodies. So, 368 little ones. They engage in STEM activities in our center and do story time with the library.
So, I created this guest journey map with the help of our staff as a Storytime STEM mom. So, the decision, they heard about it from a neighbor, it’s great, word of mouth. They looked at our website, they were able to find our hours and our location. They liked our Facebook page. They set a date with their neighbor to attend. So, all of these checked the boxes for them. They were able to find the information. Whatever we showcased on these different avenues helped them to make the decision to get there. But they got there, and the parking lot was packed. Storytime STEM, lots of little kids, little crazy. And you’re toting around two kids with multiple car seats and toddlers holding hands in the parking lot, a little hectic. They were able to get into the building, but the lobby was full. So, story time was happening in the lobby, little hectic, lots of noise, lots of activity. They were able to find our front entrance, which is a giant pipe sewer pipe that you enter into. So that was easy, and they were welcomed by our staff upon entry.
Staff then oriented them into the space and to the activities that were happening. And they called out a specific staff member who really took the time and engaged with them at our map exhibit. From what they saw, the exhibits were fun and engaging. They had a good time, but the exhibit that they came there to see was broken. And so, that was a disappointment. There was a long wait for the garbage truck. Yes, we do have a garbage truck in the middle of our museum and the kids can get up into it and pretend that they are garbage truck drivers. And it is the most popular exhibit that we have. So, the wait was long, but they said it was worth it.
Staff told them about our big trucks events on the way out. So that was good. And then they found the exit to the playground, which was super convenient. They actually came back from the playground after playing an hour and got back into the garbage truck. Paper towels were out in the restroom obviously because it was hit hard by lots of people. But the mom was able to make new friends and make new connections. And so, she is returning again next Wednesday.
And the one thing that she learned while she made friends and hung out at Storytime STEM was that she will never flush a flushable wipe again. Did you guys know that flushable wipes are not flushable? Who knew? Who knew? Awesome. Everybody raise your right hand. I, insert your name, will never flush a flushable wipe again. All right, perfect. Got you. All right. So, this is an example, I’m going to leave, I’m going to go back to this, so you have it as an example, but you guys are going to take the one in front of you. You can partner up with a friend. I encourage you to move closer to somebody so you can share this experience and brainstorm. You’ll get a lot more out of it that way.
But what you are going to do is create your guest journey map. And then, with the little stickers I’ve provided, there’s a happy face green sticker, a meh yellow sticker, and a red sad face sticker. You are then going to rate each of these things. So, word of mouth, I rated that green. The website was okay, they were able to find the hours. Facebook page was great. Attended, but the parking lot was packed. That was a red. So, you guys are going to create your journey map and then rate these different things, and then we’re going to chat about it for a little bit and talk about what you can do to help turn those reds into greens. Any questions before we get started? We’re going to give you a little time. Perfect.
All right. I saw a lot of really A-plus students out there as I did a little walk around. I would be curious to know if we have any brave souls that would like to share their guest journey map. And just to preface this, we do have prizes for those of you that volunteer and participate and speak. I’m not going to name what they are, but they’re really cool. So, can I get somebody to share? Raise your hand. Yeah. Brayden, you want to. This is my boss, Brayden, and I’m having him run all over the room.
Cicely Martin:
Hello, all this one. All right. I may not have needed it. I have a theater voice. My name is Cicely Martin. I’m from Kean University in New Jersey and where we have a plethora of galleries on campus. So, we have seven galleries on campus. And this is Joy. Joy explained. I came a little late, but Joy explained the focus of this project and I did my due diligence on being a patron coming to our galleries. And because we have seven galleries on campus, we do admonish all visitors to go to all of the galleries to tell the story of art. And sometimes it may be a little overwhelming. So even though we have a beautiful campus that we always promote, and people love to come to, they may not want to walk it. And so, we do have trolleys. However, the trolleys only take you to where their stops are.
And so, thinking of that, considering some of our senior groups that come, they may be deterred to come and go through every gallery. This is my sister, she’s like my patron reviewer. She’s like, it’s spa. So, it is a little far, it’s a little a stretch. And so, preparing them for that. So even though we have a beautiful campus and galleries are all reachable, that may be something that is a deterrent from making the decision to come to Kean on that day. We do have great flexibility with hours, and we service groups, which is a good thing, but we have no lunch areas. So, if we want you to spend a whole day, now you’re hungry and you’re not that happy with me. You might be hangry. And so, I have to deal with that.
We have a good social media presence, which really is drawing, but we want to make sure that we have maps. We don’t have maps to show you how to get from. We have the map, and we point it out, but they need to have a takeaway to see how to get. And we also have an door sculpture collection, which we need to let them know that takes about 45 minutes to an hour to see. And so, they’re like, “Oh yeah, I want to see the sculpture collection.” It’s throughout the campus, it’s not just one area.
I’m finding out a lot about myself as I am the director, so it’s my responsibility to fix it. So, I do thank you. It is a plethora of other things, but we have good art there and that’s the real win. And the educational program is great for school trips because you have these young people that are ready to walk the campus. But we have a mirage of people that we would like to come, which would be our senior groups and our middle-aged groups. And we want all the groups that feel so we have molds of getting you there. We have golf carts, but if you have a group of 20, how many golf carts do you really want going around on this campus? It’s like a menace. So, I’m working on it.
Christie Dentry:
I love that. So, knowing is half the battle and going through this exercise and identifying some of these pain points is the first step. And some of these are going to be harder to solve than others. For you, you have seven galleries, there’s a lot to see. There’s no lunch. I mean, I would be the hangriest person in the world there. Some of these are not going to be easy to solve, but knowing is the first step and getting your team involved and then identifying ways that you can minimize these pain points will really go a long way in your visitor service.
Let’s do a little raise of hands. How many were shocked at how many red circles they had? Or did you pretty much know that those things are bad, and it is what it is? Who had more than a few red? Let’s be honest, we’re transparent here. We put it on the board. Good. Again, knowing is half the battle. Who was shocked at how many greens they had? You guys know you’re good. I’m never shocked at the greens. My boss will tell you, never. No, but again, this is a great exercise to go through with your staff. Not only can you do it for your entire museum, but then you can break it out by exhibition. You can break it out by room, by program. It’s a nice exercise to try and identify those things that you really need to work on or to celebrate those things that you’re really doing well.
So, with that, we are going to move on. Again, we could spend the whole day on this. I do an entire workshop just on this thing. But we are going to have Jenny come up and talk a little bit about the other side of this workshop, which is the employee experience side.
Jenny Rydeen:
And seeing how so many of you are potentially bringing journey mapping back to your museums or organizations for the first time, I’ll add a couple of tips onto what Christie said. The first thing to remember is that sometimes the process of making the journey map is even more important than the final product because the process that really unites teams creates dialogue and discussion and buy-in and support for the areas of the visitor experience that you want to improve. And also, after making your journey map with your staff who talk directly to visitors, often that’s the easiest place to start. Do actually bring your journey map to your visitors and use that journey map that you made with your staff as a way to develop what do you want to know from your visitors, and then validate the information that you have with them directly.
But we’re here to talk more about really designing the employee experience. And we believe that to create the most outstanding visitor experience, we need to be just as intentional with designing the employee one. And the great thing is a lot of the tools that we use to design visitor experiences are the exact same tools that you can use for employees. So, this journey mapping exercise, you can take to your employee experience, in the same way that you might map out what is the school group teacher experience to come to your museum. You can also map out what is the school group greeter experience to welcome them. And when you have those maps together, that’s where you get really outstanding insights.
So, I’m going to share with you three practical things that we do at Mia, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, to design and really foster excellent employee, volunteer, and visitor experience. And that’s going to be Mia 101, which is our new employee orientation, something that we call the E in experience, which is a way for us to really prioritize and define what areas we should focus on. And then, really talking about employee insights.
So, the first one, my favorite is new employee orientation. We have a three-day new employee orientation that is co-designed and co-led by myself as the head of visitor experience and our human resources department. And I absolutely love this and cannot tell you how special it is and also recommend it for your organizations that as somebody who works in visitor experience, I actually have new employee orientation in my job description. And I think that just gives a really special platform and partnership to think about human experiences across the museum, whether they’re visitors, staff, or volunteers. And by co-designing it with HR, we really make sure that we’re clear about our mission that all the new employees going through that walk away understanding how their job functions supports the mission and whether you work directly or indirectly with visitors, you know the empath that you’re having.
So, we do fun things like we do art tours. We really make sure that we design different workshops for other staff to come in and meet new employees. It’s cross-divisional, cross-departmental, so you’re meeting staff based on how long they’ve been there. It’s usually in your first 90 days, but it doesn’t have to be one department or one division. And then, a part of the new employee orientation brings new staff in direct contact with the visitors. We have one hour session called Meet Mia Visitors, where new employees shadow front line staff, our visitor experience staff in particular, and that allows them to share what’s most important from their perspective for these new staff to know and also for them to get to match names and faces right away when they’re starting. So instantly when you walk in the building, because our staff check-in area is past our visitor experience desk, new staff aren’t just walking by, but they already have relationships with those staff who are there to welcome the visitors. And it’s been really powerful.
Since this new employee orientation, the shadowing component has gone so well. We’ve expanded it to have a visitor experience job shadow program, which you can apply for as a department in the museum. It’s recommended for three to five staff of the same team and our marketing team will be going through it in the next couple of months, so we’re excited about that.
The next thing I want to share with you is what we call the E in experience. It’s super cheesy, it works for us. So, there are four Es in experience. So, we have four words that start with E to really think about what is it that we should prioritize or focus on when making an experience outstanding. So, this document is internal. It’s meant to be used with staff that I work with on a daily basis, and it really helps us say, “Do we all agree on what makes a high-quality experience?”
We might all have the same intention to design something really, really beautiful, but do we have the same understanding of what those qualities are that we need to think about? So, I’ll run through them quickly for you. The first one is environment. So, is it safe? Is it clean? Is it Mia? And environment’s always number one, making sure a museum is in the best possible format every day for us to open. The second one is calling out employee and having that in writing as a core value of something that we need to make sure that employees have what they need and are able to feel successful when delivering an outstanding visitor experience. And then, we do this with volunteer training. So, we have an excellent volunteer version to keep that E theme going.
Ease and efficiency. I don’t know where this quote comes from, but I say it all the time. It’s easy to make things hard, it’s hard to make things easy. Sometimes the processes that we set up are really not making things simpler for our visitors. And so, it’s just getting back to how complicated is this for the visitor to go through. Especially with one of our goals, I’m sure it’s your goal as well is to just continue to increase attendance. And so, focusing on making it easy and then getting repeat visitation through that ease and experience is a top priority. And then, emotion. We know that visitors remember the most emotional part of their journey, whether it’s the most positive thing that happened to them or the most negative thing. And so, keeping that top of mind when we’re talking about visitor feedback, ways we can improve and learn and grow.
The third thing I want to highlight is just how important and how smart, and you all know this being visitor experienced people, your teams are that work directly with the visitor. We know that there’s a certain type of visitor that will agree to fill out a survey and that survey data is incredibly important, but we continue to push to try to review it in conversation with our frontline staff observations. So, there is a silent majority, somebody who’s never going to fill out that survey, but your frontline staff may observe something about their experience that could be really meaningful to add.
And so, I cannot take any credit for this, but I want to highlight an example of one of our staff, Elizabeth Edwards, who just did a fantastic job bringing her insights and observations about the visitor experience and drove a beautiful result at Mia. We have gallery stools. We had an opportunity to get new gallery stools, and they were not weight-inclusive, so she really led a project to have weight-inclusive gallery stools and then have that be clear to visitors, really making our museum more accessible. And they’re available now on all three floors. And then, she posted about it on LinkedIn, and within 24 hours, it already had well over 1,000 likes. So, you can tell it really resonates with our community and just love to highlight visitor experience staff doing incredible things for everyone at Mia with their insights and observations.
So, thinking back to the four Es, our next activity is you’re going to create your own four E’s, or they don’t have to start with E, they can be any letter, but you’re going to create your own core components activity. And so, start by with a person next to you or somebody who you haven’t talked to yet, talk about what are the most important aspects in designing an outstanding experience. All right, we’re going to have a couple volunteers share out their favorite aspects of designing and outstanding experience from their list. And Susana is going to start also from Mia.
Susana:
So, I want to start by saying when we were trying to brainstorm together, it took a minute because it’s often harder to think of that time that was [inaudible 00:31:09] for you. It’s very easy to think of that time that was negative. And what really came to was in addition to having an articulated experience that you understand that’s clear and a team that knows what their strengths are and that’s interacting with you, the thing that really puts it over the top is surprising and delighting and going above and beyond.
So the thing for me in an experience I had where I was a visitor, it was the extra thing they went out of the way to do to help me, I got lost and got picked up in a little cart and driven to where I needed to go, or someone coming in to check in on me or getting upgraded to something I didn’t plan on. And now, I’m like, “Oh, I’m going back there for sure.” That’s what sticks in my mind, not that, oh, it was fairly easy to navigate, whatever, but that extra little thing that surprised and delighted me, that helps me want to go back.
Christie Dentry:
Who else will share?
Speaker 5:
Hi. So, my number one thing that I appreciate is a friendly greeting and interaction with employees that are working somewhere. I was saying if I walk into a store and people don’t greet me and say hello, it’s like it puts a bad taste in my mouth right away and I just want to turn around and walk away. So that to me is number one.
Christie Dentry:
Yeah, absolutely not being acknowledged right off the bat is a huge one. And the surprise and delight and making up for a mistake and realizing the mistake and then correcting it, that’s another one. I’ll tell a very short story. My boss is rolling his eyes in the back. So, I’m going to tell a story about Disney. I’m a Disney girl, California girl, sorry. But had a horrible experience at Disney and I never have a horrible experience. My trust in them is so deep that I was so disappointed that I had this horrible experience. I was almost going to cancel my annual pass. I was done, it was that bad.
And the next day, it was like they had a tracker on me. I walk in the park, security greets me with, “Oh, Ms. Poppins, you’re here. Practically perfect in every single way.” From the moment I walk in, it was like they had a tracker on me. And every single experience was a surprise and delight. I get on the train, it’s so full. She’s like, “Oh, you’re going to have to wait for…” “Oh no, no, no. Come this way.” She let me onto a train car that was completely private that I had never ridden in, that I didn’t even know existed. And so, if you’re able to admit your mistake and then surprise and delight to get your way out of it, it makes a huge, huge impact. Anybody have anything they would like to share?
Jenny Rydeen:
I’ll get three more.
Christie Dentry:
[inaudible 00:34:05] in the back. Brady’s got it.
Estrella:
Hi, everyone. I’m Estrella, definitely hear what other folks are saying about, we also talked about making sure that you have a friendly smile and a greeting, but also making sure that I don’t have to talk to someone if there’s a long line or if there’s a lot of people. I want to be able to figure out where the bathroom is myself and where the brochures are. And so, having a lot of clarity and wayfinding is huge. I love to think about UX and Nielsen’s heuristics and applying that to a physical space.
Christie Dentry:
That is a great point. I myself am one that do not want to talk to anybody in a museum ever. And I am a museum professional, and I love museums. I want to walk in, not say hi to a single person, go do my own thing. And so, being able to customize that experience to each individual. And so, that is a really great point. We’re going to get into that a little bit later. Can I get another sharer?
Speaker 7:
Sorry, I walked in late, but I think I get the gist of it. One thing I jotted down independently is consistency in the message. So, one of the problems that I notice when I’m having not such a good time is that I’m getting a different message from different people. So, if I ask one person something and I get that answer, and then maybe as I get further along, I ask the same question. This can be applied to so many different things, but if everyone in the place is giving you a different answer, which pisses me off.
Christie Dentry:
Yep, [inaudible 00:35:54].
Speaker 8:
My staff gets crazy about this, but I get crazy about this and then I put that on them. But if I miss somewhere and I say, “Thank you,” and they say, “No problem,” I’m turned off immediately. Yes, it’s no problem because it’s your job. But also, as kids we’re taught to, when somebody says thank you, you say you’re welcome. It’s two words, just like no problem. And if you say no problem, then you’re just discounting the fact that I thanked you for anything. So don’t say no problem, say you’re welcome. That’s all I need. Awesome. Thank you for that.
Jenny Rydeen:
Yeah, word choice is so important. So that’s why for us leading teams, it’s important to be clear about what we believe makes the most outstanding experience and really to be open to that dialogue about other ideas and other ways of accomplishing that. So now that we’ve done this exercise, talk with the person next to you. How does this change the way that you approach designing an experience for somebody now that you’ve heard from most people in the room? All right. Who would like to share what they discussed? Let’s have two groups.
Christie Dentry:
Sharing is caring, and I have stickers. Come on, let’s get some hands raised. I’m going to pick on people. Did you raise your hand? All right, Brayden, what do you got? You have a microphone.
Brayden:
In true Christie fashion, I blacked out. What were you asking?
Christie Dentry:
Yep. Sounds about right.
Brayden:
Yep.
Christie Dentry:
All right, so hopefully-
Brayden:
I’ll answer it. I’ll answer it.
Christie Dentry:
Oh, okay.
Brayden:
I just had to give you a hard time because that’s who I am. So, one of the things that we talked about, and I’m going to use my group mates here, is just being very intentional. You design a lot of programs, you design experiences, you think you know what it’s going to be. You’re like, “I know how to do this, I know how to do that.” But going through exercises like these and being more intentional around that design was one of the things that we talked about and raised up for us.
Christie Dentry:
Good. Intentionality is huge. Again, customizing those experiences and making them individual is a really big part of this.
Jenny Rydeen:
Who else had intentionality in their group?
Christie Dentry:
On purpose, good. Yeah, Intentionally, nice. Good joke.
Jenny Rydeen:
All right, we are going to move on to Slido. Go ahead and list your favorite core component that you talked about as a group. And while you’re doing that, I’ll share, Christie and I have both attended the Disney Institute and they do this core component exercise really well. It’s where we were inspired to create our version at Mia and Christie’s version at her science center. And so, of course, they’re a fantastic resource for this type of work.
Christie Dentry:
I love that. I love that employee is raising to the top. That’s awesome. Intentionality, welcoming. Somebody I saw put experience, not service. That’s going to segue into our next little chunk here. Connection. Awesome. Engagement. It’s like you guys know what I’m going to do next. Experts in the room. All right. So again, you could spend an entire workshop on just this one exercise. This is a great exercise to do with your staff and really list out the things that are going to be your core components to get their buy-in and make a great experience for both your visitors and employees.
So next, we might as well define experience. And so, the way that we define it at the Utility Exploration Center, and I did fail to mention where we were from. We are in the city of Roseville, so Northern California, just out of Sacramento. This is the way that we define experience, and it is another math equation, but it is service plus engagement. And so, these two components make up the bulk of our experience and this is what we find important as both staff and a museum.
So, what I’m going to show you are the elements of experience that we have created. And this really puts a nice little bow on this whole workshop because what it ties together is that visitor experience, employee engagement, and visitor engagement as well as our staff values. So, on the left-hand side, since we’re a science museum, we did little play with elements. On the left-hand side, you’ll see our elements of customer service. These are elements how we engage with our customer. In the middle green, you will see our elements of engagement, and this is how we engage with our customer.
And then, the third one is our staff values. So, these are values that we hold near and dear. Our staff came up with them, we came up with them together, we voted on them, and this is what we live, eat, and breathe. Now the way this is utilized is that there was a quote, and I forgot who said it of course, but culture should be screamed down the halls and plastered on the walls. And so, this is a giant poster that is in our back office. We all live by these different elements, and we have created a way to communicate with them with our employees through the use of affirmations.
So, I’m going to tell a really short story. Promise, it’ll be short. Who has heard of Snoop Dogg? Yeah, we’re almost in the LBC. Okay, real close. My staff had just learned a new school program. It was one that we were just recently launching, and they were a little bit nervous about it. And so, after the completion of the program, they came back, and I asked them about it. How did it go? They were like, we were a little nervous. So right before we sat in the parking lot and we blared Snoop Dogg’s affirmations, and I’m sitting in my desk and I’m just like, “Oh my God, I’m going to a principal, phone call. They’re blasting rap music in an elementary school parking lot.”
I had no idea what they were talking about, but Snoop Dogg has created this children’s music, and it is teaching kids all about positive affirmations and that they can do hard things and believe in themselves. And so, my staff were listening to this children’s song to hype them up to do a second-grade program. And so, for our affirmations, we have that little Snoop Dogg on our board. And the way we do it is we have all of these elements as little business cards.
So, we have 100 of each printed up at any given time and our staff can give each other affirmations based on the elements that they see. So, if they’re doing something like they covered for someone, they would get a one team affirmation. And those affirmations, once they’re received go up on this Snoop Dogg board and at every monthly staff meeting, I put them in a big bowl. It’s actually a witch’s cauldron. I don’t know where we got it.
Then we draw them, talk about them at the staff meeting, and then they get to pick a prize from our pirate’s treasure chest. It is a real pirate’s treasure chest. It’s wood, it has cool stuff in it. So again, your staff have to have buy-in with this. These are things that they wanted, they created. I would have no idea that they love Snoop Dogg affirmations. I would have no idea that they needed a pirate’s treasure chest. Maybe that was me. That could have been me. But again, get their buy-in, figure out what’s going to motivate them and then use it.
So, I lead a whole workshop on just this. I’m going to gloss over it very quickly because we don’t have that kind of time. And I want to leave room for you guys to ask questions, but I’m going to go through it very quickly. So, this is how we run our customer service. And just so that you guys know, there will be a QR code at the end. I give you all of these documents. You’re going to have copies of everything. You’ll have copies of the worksheet, steal it, take it, use it. These are things I created but go for it.
So, this is the backbone of our customer service. Our elements are safety, of course. A lot of you talked about that in the word cloud. Courtesy, that’s a given. I’m not going to read these things, but the way that you read these tables is this is what it feels like on the top and this is what it looks like. And so, this is how we train our staff. This is what it feels like, this is what it looks like. So that it’s perfectly clear to them this is what it means, this is how I demonstrate it, this is what it looks like to a visitor.
Optics. I’m the optics queen. My staff call me the optics queen, that was not self-appointed. It is to the point where our staff will see something wrong on the floor. They say one word to each other, its optics, and automatically it gets cleaned up. Everybody understands what it means, and it gets taken care of right away.
The other thing that I really harp on here is opting into interaction. A lot of times on the floor with interpretation, you will see it’s really easy to sit there and observe. And it’s a little harder, especially with these younger staff who went through COVID and don’t have some of the social experiences that their older counterparts might have to opt in. And so, I constantly tell them, opt into interaction. It’s super, super important. Opt into the activity.
Inclusion is big with us. Not only do we want to be a welcoming museum and a welcoming environment where everybody is safe, but we also want to acknowledge everybody’s perspectives in our work. And so, this doubles with our employees and our visitors. We want to make sure that everybody’s perspective is heard and respected. And then, efficiency. This is the job part. We got to do our job, we got to do it well, we got to do it fast but accurate. So, this is the backbone of our customer service. Again, flying through this, but if you have any questions, my contact will be up at the end. This is how we engage with our visitors.
So, it seems that five is a theme. And it’s funny because I didn’t realize that until I put this together. All of our elements are five, all of our steps are five, but this is how we engage with our visitors. So, a welcome. Again, what it feels like, what it looks like. This is super important when training front line staff, it makes it idiot-proof. This is what it is, this is what it feels like, this is what it looks like. And at the bottom it’s an example of it.
Once they’re welcomed in, it’s the tune in. So, we talked about intentionality, we talked about individualization. So, figuring out what that specific customer needs and finding a solution or an option that is customized to them. Interact. Again, this is where you make or break your experience. So, opting in to those interactions, asking questions, building relationships so you get repeat visitation, making it memorable. Interpret this as part of the job. We’re connecting content to people. That’s why we exist. We’re connecting our message and our story and our content to people. This is what it feels like. This is what it looks like.
And then wow, just like I gave out stickers and we talked about the surprise and delight, we have a wow drawer. Now we don’t get many crying kids unless they’re asked by their parents to leave. So little Kyle didn’t get to go in the garbage truck for the 51st time that morning. And so, he’s bawling his eyes out and there’s not a lot we can do. They have to go home, they have to have snack, they have to have a nap. But we can turn those tears into a positive experience by handing him a sticker. It instantly changes the negative to a positive right as they’re exiting. And the parents love it. And it’s simple. It’s cheap. I bought you guys with stickers. I got you to participate with stickers. It’s simple. So, this is how we engage with our guests.
Last but not least, when we’re talking about employee engagement, this is the most important. This is where we get the buy-in and it’s through our staff values. As a full-time team, we made a draft of staff values. We talked about it as a group. We whittled down what are some options. It was a much larger list than this. And then, we brought it to the full team and started talking about it and editing and whittling down and picking the right verbiage. They all have buy-in with every single one of these. These are separate elements on our wall. And they’re in the kitchen because everybody’s always in the kitchen. And so, they can see them, they live by them. And all of these are super important to us.
All of the time, we will be joking around, and we’ll say something like one team or own it, somebody’s goofing off and we will say, “Own it.” And they immediately snap right back in. So, these are the ones we use all the time and they’re super, super important to us. I encourage you, if you do not have staff values to create your own, it will immediately get you that buy-in and help to act as a full group.
Who has staff values? Show of hands. A few of you. Who has anything like engagement elements or different components that they engage with, with their? Good. How about customer service, tenants or elements, something like that? Okay, good. So, a lot of you have a lot to work to do. And the first step is just starting. I’ve given you the tools. You have the map, you have the things, you have the elements, create your own. And this is a nice little package. If you sit with your staff and do this, all of a sudden you have buy-in from all of your staff and you have a document that then you can take to upper management and say, “Hey, this is important.” This is what all of our staff are saying. And then, you can get the support hopefully from upper management to do more.
So, any questions about these things? I did breeze through it very quickly. Again, I lead an entire workshop just on these three things. I will be presenting at Aztec on those three things if you guys are going to go to Aztec. But with that QR code, it takes you to Google Doc. It has all of Jenny’s documents as well as all of mine, blanks of the worksheet, and anything you might need to get started. So, with that, does anybody have any questions about anything that we’ve done today? You’ll still get a sticker if you ask a question. No questions, we were that good? Wow. Downloading.
Speaker 10:
Hello. Well, first of all, thank you very much for sharing your experience with us. I’m curious a little bit more about the part you just presented about the staff values. If you could just talk a little bit more about the process of how you decided, okay, this is something that’s going to benefit us and we’re going to approach it. We’re going to approach it by coming up with a list of values and then taking it to the team. How did that thought process work?
Christie Dentry:
So, we had this great opportunity where all of a sudden, we didn’t have any staff and then we had to hire a bunch of new staff. And so, we came up with thought of, look, everybody has to be on the same page. We really have to be operating off of the same playbook. And we were at another juxtaposition where last April, March, April, I don’t know what day, a year ago, we took our entire museum down to the studs and did a full remodel. And so, the thought was we need all of this in place to be able to open a brand-new museum to the public. We need the same playbook to work from and we need these components in order to operate as one group. And so, for us, we’re a very tight team and I attribute it to this.
Again, it’s all over the walls. They’re giving each other affirmations based off of it. They’re reciting it to each other on the floor when things go wrong. And the process, we literally did brainstorm. So, what did we want the visitor to see in our museum? What experience did we want our visitor to have in our museum? And these were big Post-its with little Post-its all over the wall. And we funneled down to what are we going to hold near and dear? What is going to motivate us in this space? What playbook are we going to work by? And we literally came up with a brainstorm much bigger than this. It was a lot of editing. We actually went through multiple visuals, which is weird. Before we had animals to represent each of these things. And then it got awkward. So, this is the nice, polished version is elements. But again, we all had [inaudible 00:56:11] and that’s why I think it’s successful. Any other questions? Yes?
Speaker 11:
Sorry. For both of you, you have your training programs. Are they only for your visitor experience department or for everybody in your museum? And if it’s for everyone in your museum, how did you get the buy-in from everyone for that?
Jenny Rydeen:
That’s a great question. It’s a combination. So, we do some trainings that are for all staff and all volunteers. Typically, they’re separate. And then, we do some training that’s just for front-of-house staff and then some that’s just for our department. And I think bringing that content, it might be the same content, but we have three different audiences allows us to adjust the content. But it’s important that everybody sees it. I think you’re right. Susana, who’s here, actually leads our visitor experience training, which is our all front-of-house training that we do quarterly, and often content from there comes from our all-staff trainings.
Christie Dentry:
For us, we have a variant. I don’t know where I should stand. We have a very intensive onboarding process, our guest journey map and this whole experience as part of our customer service one training. For customer service two, I have a different version of this, which is an auditing tool that then I take all of our staff to a museum, and we audit the museum based on these criteria. So, if you’re in the LA area, watch out because I’m coming. No. But it’s a nice way to put it into practice.
So, we’ve done this now twice with our full team. We did an excursion to San Francisco, which is relatively close. We’ve hit up the Sacramento area museums as well. That’s the bulk of our customer one, customer service two training. Our interp training gets more into the engagement elements. So, in our interpretation training, we really dive into these, and we practice them in the center. We do it with the full team. So not only our interpreters, but our front desk staff, our full-time staff as well. Again, everybody needs to be working off of the same playbook. Everybody needs to know what is happening even though they might not be in it every day.
And then in addition, we have a full training plan for each employee. So, we have four quarterly trainings that we deliver. There is a customer service piece, an interpretation piece, and a safety piece baked into each one of those quarterly trainings. And they all refer back to these playbooks. And that’s full staff.
Jenny Rydeen:
We increased our training over time, and I think one of the biggest things that stands out to me was hearing that you should of course train when you identify that there’s a need. But then it’s even more important to train when things are going well because that reinforces it and keeps that experience really high quality, which is I think something that I learned also from the Disney Institute to get another plug. But that really helped us get more buy-in and support too.
Christie Dentry:
Any other questions, comments, side remarks? Got one.
Speaker 12:
Jenny, can you share what the shadowing process is like? I know you mentioned your marketing team is doing it soon, just like what that looks like.
Jenny Rydeen:
Yeah, so we asked staff to commit to six hours. Three of those hours are shadowing. They’re one hour each, three different days. And then, the other three hours are a session to prep for the shadowing. So, me giving them some fundamentals about what they can expect from our visitor experience team, and then two hours where they’re meeting with the team, actually sharing their expertise. So, it’s really a give and take back and forth. And we piloted it last year with five different staff and the feedback from them was, gosh, it would’ve actually been really nice to go and talk about this with my team, but because we piloted it with one person from each different department, they weren’t able to go back and apply it. And so, that’s where now when we’re launching it this year, it will be five staff all from marketing.
For us, it’s not evergreen. We want the shifts to really be what that staff member needs to know. And so, we’re super careful about who we’re going to partner our email manager and communications manager with, who we’re going to partner our PR manager with, who the head of marketing is actually going to sit with. So, it really will provide them with the best insights for their role.
Christie Dentry:
Any other questions? Again, that QR code will take you to a Google document that has all of the things. If you have any questions whatsoever after you leave this room, we are now your friends, best friends. So, feel free to hit me up. If you want to walk through how to do a guest journey map, I will help you. If you’re creating your customer service tenants or your engagement elements, contact me. Same with employee experience with Jenny. Contact us. We’ll be glad to walk you through it and be glad to answer any questions that you have as you take this back with your staff.
Before you escape this room, if you are interested, take the copies, take the stickers, take them back to your staff. There is a big stack on that back chair as well. I want them gone. I have to get on an airplane. I do not want to carry any of this stuff back with me. And we have some stickers up here. If you did not get a sticker, I’ll happily give you one. But we thank you so much for being here on the last day of conference for a two-hour workshop. You guys were engaging and wonderful, so give yourselves a big round of applause. Thank you.
Jenny Rydeen:
Everybody.
This recording is generously supported by The Wallace Foundation.
