Mark Hollington, Hospitality Director for the regional venues, updates Ensemble about the company’s Mystery Guest programme.

In the regions, January presented another opportunity to improve our guests’ experience, develop our standards of service and to be recognised as delivering a truly memorable experience to our visitors. This month, teams have been focusing heavily on ‘sales through service’ and refining their approach to ‘widening the window’. We can see this in the range of consistent and strong scores in this area.

Here is a summary of the December results:
New Theatre – No visit this month due to national closure
Arts Centre – 98%
Orchard Theatre – 97%
Wyvern Theatre – 96%
White Rock – 94%
Lyceum Theatre – 93%
Wycombe Swan – 90%
Cliffs Pavilion – 90%
Beck Theatre – 90%
Churchill Theatre – 90%
G Live – 89%
Palace Theatre – 74%

★★★★ THIS MONTH’S STAR OF THE SHOW ★★★★

A huge congratulations to our ‘Star of the Show’ team member… Tatum Evans from G Live! 

Tatum sought the opportunity to create a memorable moment for her guest which left a positive, lasting impression. Congratulations and well-done Tatum. 

“At the restaurant, we opted to have our dessert and hot drinks during the interval. However, we had also pre-ordered a drink and snack for the interval, which was due to be delivered to our seats in the auditorium. Tatum offered to organise for the pre-ordered drink and snack to be delivered to our table instead, stating that we could consume them during the second half. She went above our expectation to solve a problem, and she did this with ease, and helped us out so that we could have our dessert and hot drinks during the interval, and then take the interval drinks and snacks to the second half. Tatum was very helpful and friendly and proactive in solving our issue. As promised, our interval bag of drinks and snacks was duly placed on the table when we arrived back to the restaurant.”

This month’s Mystery Guest reports highlight a range of areas for venues to focus upon in February:

★ More than one report raises toilet cleanliness, availability of soaps and functioning facilities.

★ There is an opportunity to improve effectiveness of sales-through-service techniques. Venues are busy delivering refresher Four Pillars training to team members which will greatly improve these score areas.

★ We are utilising the Restaurant Experience feedback to help inform the Spring Menu development process.

Other Information:

★ 2,900 guests took the time to respond to post-visit survey emails in January with an average score of 4.57 / 5.

★ Our ‘most improved’ scoring questions were all ‘value for money’ related.

★ ‘Allergen Awareness’ in the Restaurant section scored poorly sparking a focus for February.