The Challenges: The Club at Brighton had been operating for ten years from a small and basic 8000-seat athletics stadium with very limited hospitality facilities. They were moving to a 22,500 state of the art major sporting venue (with a view to increasing to 31,000 the following year) and a much-expanded corporate hospitality/events operation over the summer months of 2011.
Externally: This would mean a significant upgrade in the customer experience to meet significantly inflated customer expectations and increases in volumes. With new, large live events and conference facilities, the team would need to develop attitudes and competencies to create the customer experiences that would ultimately win spend and engagement across diverse groups. Effectively, this small Club was quickly developing into two much larger corporate businesses – with many new/varying customer journeys and key touchpoints that needed to come up to the mark – both as a club and a venue-driven corporate hospitality/events operation.
Internally: Managers and staff needed to complete a successful move to new facility/operations with enhanced operational excellence. However, there was a legacy of fragmented, small, ‘local club-think’. There was a need to both preserve the heart of the club while developing a ‘one team’ sporting & hospitality culture where people would truly value world class customer service.
The Solution: An initial research phase was developed that would provide insights into employee and customer perceptions and inform the design of the development and communication strategy to deliver:
- Sustained ‘top of the league’ customer experiences for fans, community, corporates, conference clients and delegates
- A climate that inspires fans, players, and employees to want to do their best to help the Club succeed
As measured by:
- B&HA Mystery Shop / Customer Feedback
- Football League Surveys / Awards
- Commercial Revenue / Spend per Head
- Attendance Increases
- Away Supporter Feedback
- League Position
Our programme involved researching and developing a change management plan and a development process for key groups in the organisation with the following steps:
1. Research and tackle internal barriers to change and engage people in our story, strategy and roadmap for success – at both Club and Team levels:
WHY: We need to change and improve
WHAT: The ‘mountain’ we are climbing and when we will reach the summit
HOW: How we are going to manage the change – macro and micro level
THE WAY: The way we do things day-to-day (“TEAM BRIGHTON” Values/Simple Rules)
2. Articulate expectations of key customer segments and interpersonal style preferences of different people
3. Develop standards of service for each customer touchpoint
4. Cultivate ‘on-brand’ behaviours, team leadership & key service skills
5. Give team leaders methods to assess and develop performance
6. Create a climate that reinforces and encourages people to live the values of the ‘new’ business
We led a series of co-creation and engagement events for fans, staff and leaders, working together on mapping the customer journey, how each team evaluated how they would need to deliver, and through sensing exercises, articulated the values, or ‘soul’ of the Club. The spirit that people felt was at the heart of who they were and who they aspired to be at the new ‘Amex’ stadium.
These events were created and delivered through the last few weeks of life in the old stadium, followed by an all-staff engagement in the hospitality areas, and reinforcement events throughout the first season. These events included the use of VerbatimPlayback immersions with the inner voices of real fans from various key segments – premium, corporate, people living with disability etc. This was repeated in 2014 when the new Training Academy was launched and the performance ethos of the club was further inculcated across the club.
Individual coaching for key leaders and professional people helped support them through such a disruptive and profound change, and a programme of mystery shops and engaging feedback/improvement sessions helped the Club gain real momentum as they moved through their first year at “the Amex”.
In the promotion season, as we made our final ‘leap’ for Premier League status, we developed and delivered three leadership development programmes for each leader to focus in on Performance Conversations to support the implementation of the values as new people joined and to keep existing staff wholly focussed on the vision and living the values. Again, these programmes were built around live immersive theatre encounters featuring actor-based characters in an interactive supervisor-team member soap opera to make the learning ‘real’.
Results: The initial transition was managed with minimal resistance and a huge positive, proactive response from the leaders and staff to the seismic disruption caused during the 8-week period moving from old stadium to new. The stadium went on to win “Best New Venue in the World” by Stadium Business Awards in its first season as well as a shortlisting for Best Overall Venue – in the world. The new vision and values were wholeheartedly embraced. Leaders and teams met intense levels of new challenge with confidence and energy – plus some great camaraderie.
Football League Survey – Nov 2011:
Report “being blown away by the friendly, good-natured hospitality on offer throughout the match-day experience.” Described many facets of the experience as “outstanding” and commented how rare it was to experience a new stadium that had “so much soul”. Researchers report that they couldn’t believe it was the same Club from previous evaluations of the two previous venues.
Internal Mystery Shop Results:
In the first few weeks of opening, the Club saw a steady rise in scores from August to January. Most touchpoints regularly scoring 85% or more.
Hospitality and Catering scores quickly rose from a red-zone 54% to over 80% after 12-14-week intensive Team Brighton development programme commenced in Oct/Nov (this team was the last team to participate in the programme) and by the end of the Season won Best Hospitality Award with Stadium Business.
In the first two years, the Club achieved history-making sales and attendance increases, going on to win numerous awards including Best Football Club to Work For, Best Matchday experience in the Championship and then in the Premier League.
Let’s All Do the Conga! Bite-Size Keynote
Campaign feature of the project (as 360 Degree Vision, our former brand)
