By Karin Butler, Strategic Advisor, Seattle Center
Some of the most valuable ideas for improving customer service in any organization come directly from staff, who see and understand opportunities and obstacles first hand through their daily work and customer interactions. But how do we uncover the best ideas for improving customer service inside complex organizations? And what benefit might result if we could empower staff to take action on their own service improvement ideas, creating change from the inside out?
At Seattle Center, we discover answers to these questions.
About Seattle Center
Seattle Center creates exceptional events, experiences and environments that delight and inspire the human spirit to build stronger communities.
A department of the City of Seattle, Seattle Center serves as an arts, civic and family gathering place in the core of our region. More than 30 cultural, educational, sports and entertainment organizations that reside on the 74-acre campus, together with a broad range of public and community programs, create nearly 5,000 events attracting 12 million visitors each year.
Seattle Center practices giving uplifting and professional service to our guests, clients, partners and each other as one of our core values. Excellent service functions as an essential business strategy we well, and we’re constantly seeking ways to improve our performance.
An Uplifting Service All Staff Retreat
In pursuit of this core value, we tried something new in April 2013. We tossed our normal meeting formats out the window and held an unconventional half-day Uplifting Service All Staff Retreat. At this retreat, we engaged close to 180 staff across all levels and roles in exploring uplifting service at Seattle Center together.
We used a new approach to designing our all-staff retreat. We turned to Liberating Structures which provide simple and effective ways to approach how people work together. This goes beyond conventional meeting structures like presentations, managed discussions or brainstorming sessions.
Liberating Structures work for any kind of organizational development effort (such as uplifting service) where your goal is to include and engage everyone and seek actionable ideas from unexpected sources
If I Were 10 Times Bolder…
Our staff retreat culminated in a Liberating Structure called “25-10 Crowdsourcing”. Using this structure, a large group can generate and sort through their boldest ideas for action in 20 minutes or less. It is serious and seriously fun!
25-10 Crowdsourcing works like this:
1. Participants are given an invitation. They are asked, “If you were 10 times bolder, what big idea would you recommend? What first step would you take to get started?” In our case, the invitation was, “If you were 10 times bolder, what would you do to create uplifting service at Seattle Center?”
2. Participants write their idea for action on 3 by 5 cards, anonymously.
3. The crowd does 5 quick rounds of milling (you need an open space) where cards are exchanged and mixed up, and all the ideas are scored by members of the crowd. Be prepared for laughter and energy!
4. After 5 rounds, the top scoring ideas are shared in priority order.
Now, you have a top ten set of bold ideas, generated by everyone at once, where everyone has an equal opportunity to contribute.
The top ideas that emerged from Seattle Center staff ranged from improving employee relations (so that by knowing each other better we can better serve our customers), to ideas for new training initiatives and a new staff ambassador role to assist guests on the Seattle Center campus.
We then took things a step further — we invited staff to sign up right then to work on any of these new ideas for improving customer service, and a small but important number did. These motivated staff formed our first three Customer Service Improvement groups, and have made a big impact since then!
CSI : Seattle Center
What do you do with inspired staff eager to work on their ideas to improve service? We gave our Customer Service Improvement groups (known as CSI Groups) the time, autonomy, coaching, and the ears of our Executive Team. These CSI Groups included frontline staff from across the organization.
For several months, CSI Groups researched and developed their ideas with proper support from a dedicated coach. Staff took charge of their own progress while the coaches offered advice, removed obstacles, and helped grow the team members’ skills. CSI Groups also were given an approved number of hours per week to work on the project during their regular shifts. Interestingly, all were working outside their normal areas of expertise!
The CSI Groups presented proposals for their service improvement ideas to Seattle Center executives in October 2013. The results opened the eyes of both staff and executives and not just because the ideas were great. We wanted to grow our staff and gave them more exposure to the executive team, as we had originally intended. Seattle Center directors were fired up not only to discover new uplifting service ideas, but also to witness these emerging leaders stretch themselves in the process. Likewise, participating staff reported feeling valued, appreciated getting to know directors more personally, and excited to be contributing to the success of Seattle Center.
After careful consideration, the executive team approved all three projects to move forward.
Seattle Center is now in the early stages of execution of these service improvement efforts:
- An enhanced employee directory that includes pictures and job responsibilities
- A customer service training program based on our new engaging service vision, mindset and behaviors
- A pilot project for Seattle Center Ambassadors to proactively assist guests on campus during busy summer festivals
The CSI Program is now an official ongoing pathway at Seattle Center for staff. The program allows staff to share their ideas and launch new service improvement projects.
We are just as excited about growing our people through this program as we are about improving our business – that’s the unexpected value in liberating staff to create uplifting service at Seattle Center.
