Case Study 7.1: Establishing a Service Culture in an Event Organization PDF

Case Study 7.1. Establishing an engaging service culture in an event organization is vital to service excellence, productivity and competitive advantage Service Culture Definition: As ‘a shared purpose where everyone is focused on creating value for others inside and outside the organization’. Event...

Case Study 7.1. Establishing an engaging service culture in an event organization is vital to service excellence, productivity and competitive advantage Service Culture Definition: As ‘a shared purpose where everyone is focused on creating value for others inside and outside the organization’. Event: University Experience Days (UEDs). Event Duration: These events are 4-hour taster experiences. Attendees: Target 16–17-year-old college students based in the UK. Event Opportunities: Provide an exciting experience, so that they should consider us as an appealing study destination if they progress their education after college. Event Challenges: In particular, the raising of UK student tuition fees from ￡3375 to ￡9000 per annum in 2012 was a critical event. This affected higher education significantly; it resulted in high increases in consumer expectations. This was not just confined to current students paying the new higher rates, but also prospective students who attended recruitment events as they researched their options. Service Culture: We appreciate that people are crucial to the success of our UEDs. This applies to both our front-line staff and visiting college students and staff. As change is so common, we have a strong emphasis on gaining both qualitative and quantitative feedback from all those involved in our events. To elaborate, we have strong interests in the level of service that our frontline staff produce and many of our frontline employees are aged between 18 and 20 with limited work experience. During each event, we employ buddy/mentoring 1-2-1 relationships. Participants are paired in twos where new staff are partnered with more accomplished colleagues. This allows us to build friendships and mutual learning/development relationships amongst those involved. We empower them to make decisions by themselves as well. Where problems might arise, if they feel capable of repairing issues by themselves without the help of their supervisors, we allow them the powers to do that. In our UEDs, our employees’ quality of networking and communication with guests is important to the overall success of our events. Our frontline staff are predominantly current students; this is significant because research tells us college learners value their experiences and opinions as much as that of academic university staff. An important responsibility which our frontline staff host are our university campus tours. They are approximately 75 minutes long and have group sizes averaging at 15 persons. While working, they are also tasked with being our eyes and ears by listening in to and observing visitor interactions and conversations amongst each other. As tours conclude, they feed back their information in quality circles. These are team meetings where all frontline employees collectively meet with their supervisor. This allows everyone an opportunity to feed back and share information with all colleagues. These are forms of self and group reflection that help to ensure everyone feels valued. Not only do we receive feedback about the event in question, but we also gain information about how we work as a team. For instance, recently our staff said they did not like the new orange T-shirts they had to wear. Others took exception to how some academic staff looked down on them during our UEDs. Afterwards, we are able to respond to such feedback and make sure that it is visible to staff so they see we do respect and value their opinions. We celebrate outstanding service by rewarding the individuals or teams concerned and then naming them amongst the wider team.