Our Hospitality Director, Mark Hollington, has the latest updates from our Guest Experience programme.

Our teams are busier than ever seeking opportunities to deliver memorable moments, exceed their guests’ expectations and feed the demand for high quality, high value experiences in their venues. One aspect I find interesting is that in March, among the most improved question scores were:

• Café upselling
• Side-dish offering
• Interval drink upselling
• Check-backs and
• Bar team product knowledge

This is wonderful to read and well done to our teams focusing on these key criteria. The most improved areas are almost all relating to the commercial aspects of our steps-of-service. We can see this translating into strong spend-per-head attainment.

The Net Promoter Score (the evaluation of the proportion of our guests who would actively recommend our venues) remains strong at an above industry average of 68.1. This is an incredible achievement and a testament of the strength of the experience both on and off the stage.

However, our Guest Survey response rate has dropped to 2.7K this month. We’ll be looking into what’s causing that reduction, nonetheless the scoring remains strong at 84/100 (up from 83/100 last month).

★★★★ THE PERFECT VENUE 100% ★★★★
I am so pleased to see one of our busiest venue’s achieve a Perfect Venue accolade – particularly a visit which includes a restaurant visit – which adds complexity and risk to the scoring and weighting. A huge well done and thank you to team Orchard Theatre, Dartford!

Palace Theatre 93%
Wyvern Theatre 92%
Arts Centre 90%
Beck Theatre 90%
White Rock 85%
G Live 85%
New Theatre 84%
Wycombe Swan 84%
Cliffs Pavilion 75%
Churchill Theatre 74%
Lyceum Theatre 73%

★★★★ STARS OF THE SHOW ★★★★
We’ve had a brilliant FOUR Star of the Show awards this month:

Danielle Montgomory – The Wyvern Theatre, Swindon
“Danielle served us at the cafe kiosk close to the main entrance. She was engaging and helpful throughout the purchase, she made recommendations to us of the products on offer, even offering us a sample of the Sahara peanuts, and she was composed and collected when the card reading machines developed a connection problem that meant card payments were failing. Altogether a very attentive and helpful member of the team.”

Rosie Pippard – Churchill Theatre, Bromley
“Rosie was our waitress at the restaurant. She gave us her undivided attention and was very patient when answering our many questions. She also went out of her way to accommodate our requests, like requesting for one of our fish and chips to not cook the fish in batter and also to put my drink and ice cream in a takeaway cup as the show was about the start.”

Jenna Wright – G Live, Guildford
‘The team member who dealt with the problems that we had (the splashing from the dropped tray and the incorrect dish) was someone who I felt went above and beyond her call of duty. Her swift reactions to the tray incident – an apology and then telling us that our drinks would be complementary – immediately defused the situation. Similarly, once alerted to the fact that the dish did not contain the chicken that had been ordered, she instantly apologised and said that she would have a new dish correctly made. When she delivered the dish, she then went further and offered my guest a complementary dessert. Her actions ensured that we were able to pass over what had happened and concentrate on the enjoyable aspects of our visit.”

Carla Cater – Palace Theatre, Westcliff
“Carla went above and beyond the call of duty. She was checking tickets as the audience entered, and when she realised our tickets were ‘restricted legroom’, she immediately moved us to better seats as she had noticed that we were both tall and would be uncomfortable. I later witnessed her assisting another audience member to move for the same reason. Later, I realised our food and drink order for the interval would be sent to the previous seat number and as soon as I returned to tell her this, she immediately informed another member of staff to change the order for us.”

★★★★ APPLAUSE CARDS ★★★★
Our venues have been extremely busy catching team members ‘doing-something-great’! A huge amount of applause cards have been given out this month, here is a selection of my favourite notes from Managers to Team Members:

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