Park Operations
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try to address it in a non-defensive manner, acknowledging the person’s issue and asking them to contact you directly. Showing others that you care about a reviewer’s comments will help mitigate the poor review.
Recruiting staff from overseas Overseas workers, students on a J-1 cultural exchange visa programme, remain an important component of the summer labour numbers for New Jersey Shore employers large and small.
As with many amusements in a coastal town, Steel Pier struggles with finding local seasonal labour. We work with CHI, a company that helps secure foreign workers who want to work and experience a different culture in the United States for a short amount of time. CHI sponsors all participants and helps secure their J-1 visas, enabling them to legally work in the US for up to four months. This year we issued about 100 contracts through CHI,
employing young people from seven different countries. It’s a positive experience for them as well as us. In regard to training, we must ensure there aren’t any cultural or language barriers that prevent them from understanding the customer service values we employ. We ask them to be fun, friendly, helpful, courteous and professional to our guests — our expectations for any employee. We hope that they can model their behaviour from our long-term employees. We continue to mentor and watch them as they begin working at Steel Pier. The simple smile, eye
contact and showing they are interested and care about those coming onboard their ride is what is expected and we continue to evaluate that. Finally, safety is our highest priority, and we will always evaluate those skills continually.
Just ask! Finally, it’s imperative to ask your customers how you did. Don’t wait to read the reviews —survey them. Ed Olwell and his team conduct surveys continually throughout the season. He asks questions about where guests have seen our marketing, social media, their experience visiting us and more. It’s remarkable how much data he receives and the amount we learn from this feedback. The amusement experience is customer-service driven.
We all strive to continue to excite our customers with new rides and attractions, but recognising that a ride operator, food worker or customer service agent can ruin that experience faster than any ride can move is paramount.
Anthony Catanoso has been in the amusement industry for 30 years and serves as president and CEO of Steel Pier (
www.steelpier.com), a family-owned and operated park in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He holds a Master of Science degree in hospitality and tourism management from Fairleigh Dickinson University and is also a member of IAAPA and board member of the New Jersey Amusement Association (NJAA)
“
We all
strive to excite our customers with new attractions, but recognising that a ride operator, food worker or customer service agent can ruin that experience faster than any ride can move is paramount
NOVEMBER 2016
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