GORDON MUTTON, PRODUCT EXCELLENCE DIRECTOR
What is your role?
My role was created in 2005 to monitor the guest experience and to see how we can continually improve quality across every aspect of the guest experience. Merlin aspires to be number one in this industry – not just in size but, most importantly, in the quality of our product and service. We must deliver on the promise we make to our visitors and strive never to disappoint. We have developed two group-wide proc- esses to monitor the guest experience: one is continual guest feedback, the other is an external mystery visit programme.
How do you get guest feedback?
We’ve been using self-completion touch- screen surveys since 2007. I was very skeptical at fi rst – I’m not a technophobe but I wondered if people would bother to complete them. I challenged the guys who’d been pestering me for a year to fi rst put one into the London Dungeon. I felt if it worked there, it’d work anywhere. It was very successful and the system’s
now operating in all 61 attractions world- wide. We’ve also increased the frequency of the surveys and adapted the system to enable us to gather information from more of our overseas guests. In London, the introduction of the touch screens means we’ve quadrupled the number of responses we get compared with the previ- ous paper process. My aim is to get one per cent of our guests fi lling in surveys.
What do you ask?
We have nine key performance questions (in a number of languages) which range from satisfaction, recommendation and value for money. There are also questions about staff, customer service, queuing and food. They’re the things we’re most
AM 2 2010 ©cybertrek 2010
All Merlin’s sites, including Warwick Castle (pictured), receive 12 mystery visits each year
THE MOMENT YOU MAKE THE EFFORT TO CONTACT PEOPLE AND THEY REALISE YOU CARE ABOUT THEIR EXPERIENCE, IT TAKES THE STING OUT OF A COMPLAINT AND YOU CAN PUT IT RIGHT
interested in. It only takes a few minutes to complete but the information is invaluable.
How do you persuade people?
I don’t offer incentives. The moment you start offering tickets or gifts people are more likely to give better scores. We posi- tion the machines near the end of the attraction so we can capture them when they’ve experienced everything. The screens need to be located where a lot of people pass by and a member of staff is available to fl ag up what they are.
How do you respond to feedback?
Every week we summarise the comments that come through the touchscreens. If it’s negative or a visitor’s question, the man- ager of the site or I will ring the visitor direct to discuss their comments. If there’s an obvious complaint, my fi rst
words will be: “We’re sorry we haven’t delivered the experience you hoped for.” In the situations where we may have got it wrong, we’ll offer tickets for another visit. The moment you make the effort to
contact people and they realise you care about their experience, it takes the sting out of it and you can put it right. Last year, for example, we had some power cuts at Chessington. I met a lady and her son who
had not only suffered from the fi rst power cut, but there was another on the day they came back, so they certainly weren’t happy. We did everything we could for them and they’re now loyal ambassadors. Many companies put customer serv- ice desks in the way of these things but they just act as gatekeepers preventing the board and senior managers knowing what’s going on. It’s not like that at Merlin: we want to know. I’m not fearful of com- plaints – every company gets them; it’s how they’re dealt with that matters.
Any mystery shoppers?
We used to do this internally but we want the results to be completely objective, so we now use an external provider. They visit all our sites up to 12 times a year. When we have a new opening we do more visits in the early days and we automatically send a mystery shopper to a site where we’re getting complaints. I also send them into competitors, they’re all important and they might, sometimes, be better than us! In short, the touchscreens tell us about
the visitor experience. The mystery shop is about the process of how we deliver that experience. Those two combined give a speedy, and fairly good picture of how an individual business is being run.
Read Attractions Management online
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