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Creating a world-class, creative customer service culture at Earls Court and Olympia
The Problem
London’s landmark event venues, Earls Court and Olympia (EC&O), were sold by P&O in 1999 when exasperated event organisers decided to build an alternative venue in the Docklands.
The new owners lost large chunks of business and when the new venue actually opened its doors in 2000 the board asked their customers what they should do.
They said “Get relationships right at every level and we will choose you every time.”
The Process
Working with the leadership team at EC&O, the ?What If! team immersed themselves in the organisation. First of all they heard the following feedback from people throughout the organisation:
“We’re all up for for it but we’re not sure what ‘it’ really is”
“It’s Marketing vs Ops vs Event Management – we’re not on the same team”
“Staff initiatives are not good enough, management are not people orientated”
“It would be nice to know if there’s an overall game plan”
This feedback (plus much, much more) was taken back to the board and a drive team of customer-centric individuals from around the business was formed to invent a way forward. The ?What If! team then worked with the drive team to:
• formulate their mission and unearth their values
• walk them through ‘how it could be’ and help them generate 1, 3 and 5 year goals
• create engagement workshops and train EC&O champions to deliver them so that the ?What If! team could step back and enable EC&O to take the baton
The Solution
A new core purpose was developed which gave birth to EC&O’s “guest philosophy”.
With ?What If! guidance the team also created an organisation that was clear about what it does and how it goes about doing it.
Using the feedback gained, the team focused on:
• identifying and training champions to support the change across the business
• getting all staff to experience the vision and values via workshops delivered by staff themselves
• leadership development
• measurement and feedback using words rather than numbers
• sharing stories and celebrating value-led behaviours
• training and recruiting in line with the values
The next phase involved taking this work to EC&O’s service partner network. Again ?What If! worked with the team at EC&O to create the tools and techniques for this and trained two of EC&O’s champions to lead the project themselves.
The Results
Customers - “There’s been a huge jump in staff attitude - everyone wants to help”
“It’s the best attention I’ve ever had from a venue”
Staff - “Having a common vision and value set has been an important part of establishing our integrity”
“We’re winning business because we’re living our values – we’re not dropping our prices”
“There’s no confusion, no misinterpretation”
Financials - The business was bought in 1999 for £180m and sold 3 years after the project started for £255m
“?What If! were not the obvious choice for this project but the results went far beyond the original brief. They were unique to work with, bringing their engaging energy and off-the-wall thinking, which stimulated our team enormously.”
Andrew Morris, Chief Executive NEC Group, previously Chief Executive EC&O
