The Dennison Railroad Depot Museum is always on the hunt for Best Practices, searching for inspiration to improve. Raising the bar and exceeding expectations with seamless operations at all three of the museums in our Museum Network is our mission. Surprisingly, we found the answer in an unlikely place...at the local coffee shop.
Whether you are a Starbucks fan or not, doesn't matter. What matters is that museums can learn a great deal about becoming extraordinary from this national coffee chain. Starbucks is one of the most respected companies in America, according to Forbes Magazine. Fast Company Magazine calls Starbucks one of America’s most innovative companies. The bottom line: they must be doing something right. We were so convinced that we could incorporate their philosophy into our museum operations with a positive result that we spent the last few years transforming ourselves into a “Starbucks Museum”, kicking off a similar Legendary Service Training Program based on Starbucks Strategy. And it has paid off in coffee beans!
When you think about it, Starbucks has a genius theory that quickly applies to museums. Instead of using the mindset that Starbucks is about selling millions of cups of coffee to customers around the world, Starbucks knows their job is to serve one customer, one cup of coffee, one experience at a time. The trick is to build that emotional connection to each and every customer as they share the story of coffee through hundreds of seen and unseen factors that appeal to the senses. In the end, Starbucks transforms a simple coffee shop visit into a remarkable experience.
Starbucks takes the most mundane, ordinary thing - a cup of coffee, and they make it extraordinary. If they can do that with a simple cup of coffee, it makes sense that if we follow their roadmap, our job in making our museums extraordinary should not be so difficult. Just as Starbucks owner Howard Schultz declares that his coffee shop managers are museum curators that use the senses to tell a story and sell coffee, why can’t a museum curator learn to focus on one customer at a time to create a human connection like a barista? We set out to find the answer to this question.
Starbucks knows that coffee will forever connect people. They do this so well, they call their shops the “Third Place”. A customer’s First and Second Places may be their home and office. But Starbucks plans to become the customer’s next favorite place – the Third Place.
Museums are exactly about human connections. So our goal was to become the community’s “Fourth Place.”
We set out to discover if the best practices of Starbucks could be successfully transferred to Museums, raising us from ordinary to extraordinary and resulting in a higher level of human connection that would improve business. And our final result was - YES! Following this strategy, we became a National Historic Landmark (2011), the Ohio Museum Association’s Institute of the Year (2012), Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year and one of only eleven organizations to receive a Ohio History Fund Grant (2013.) Something was working for us.
Sticking to our core values, which Starbucks’ Schultz describes as critical, we began a process of self-examination and a search for excellence to create our own transformation agenda to build a better customer connection around our museums. As Schultz and every economist will tell you, the recent shift in consumer spending illustrates that customers are demanding higher standards and more choice. What was once good, is no longer good enough. What we have done to connect with our visitors in the past will no longer work. There are more choices, so what we are doing has to be really great.
The Transformation Agenda we developed from this creative exercise can be beneficial to all museums.
1. Improve your Points of Entry and make them Personal. According to Starbucks, every action or non-action has the ability to add or detract. When you walk into Starbucks, an entire strategy is in place, both seen and unseen, that includes the sights, sounds, smells and experiences that surround you. We intensely reviewed our museum's first impressions to make sure they were not only welcoming, but innovative and exciting as well. We asked, why can’t our customers feel as good when entering or leaving our museums, as they do when visiting Starbucks? We followed the formula, and began to steep our customers in a unique experience from the moment they got out of their car and walked in our door. Just like Starbucks, we paid attention to aroma, visuals, signage, interaction between customers and front line staff. Because we are a WWII Canteen Site, we made sure we upgraded the free coffee we have every day in the lobby and added a variety of “personal choices” like cinnamon, nutmeg and different creamers. We decorated and themed our bathrooms. No longer do we have a plain, ordinary women’s restroom. We have an extraordinary bathroom done in a 1940s Movie Star Dressing Room theme. It is the subject of many positive remarks! No longer do you walk to the counter and just pay admission. Instead, you have a menu of admission options such as the “Bullet Tour”, “Scavenger Hunt Tour” and “Storyteller Tour”. Each option is different and can be personalized to the customers needs and desires.
2. Create Front Line Experience Coordinators and Teach them to be Lifeguards. In the past, we placed our newest, least trained staff on our front lines as the best place to learn. Following Starbucks model of intensely training their baristas to make more personal connections, we completely transformed our front line folks into Experience Coordinators (EC) who are now the MOST trained employees. They go through extensive Legendary Service Training including our “Lifeguard” program which teaches them to always watch the “pool” (lobby), to never let a customer “drown” in the pool, to always keep a lookout for “dolphins” (museum members), and “sharks” (potential big donors.) We reinvented a positive culture and attitude into the workplace that makes dealing with customers on the front line not the worst job, but the best job! We instilled passion, enthusiasm and expertise into their work that customers can feel. No longer are visitors just handed a museum ticket. An EC, sporting their own personal signature item with personality (whether a 1940s hat, engineer cap or colorful museum buttons), will present you with your own dog tag, and for kids – a reward charm on the completion of their scavenger hunt. Of course, the EC marks your exciting entrance to the Museum by pulling the Railroad Train Whistle for all to hear. In short, EC became as Schultz describes “merchants of romance and theater, and as such, the primary catalyst for delighting customers.”
3. Think like an Icon in order to be Relevant to your Community. You cannot become the Fourth Place in your community if you are not relevant and meaningful to your community. Just like writing grants, your projects must be “worthy” and make your community a better place to live and work. As Schultz shares, “Icons make sense of the tension of the times, offering hope…” Can we help frame the way people view the times they live in? Do we shape the concept of community? Do Museums protect and project community values? We believe the answer to these questions are yes. Museums tackle many of these issues every day in different ways. We began to see ourselves and think of our museum as an Icon, and behave as Icons would behave. Suddenly, we became more involved in issues that are of importance to our community, providing leadership and receiving respect and more community involvement in return. Guiding thoughts were: Will our work make our people proud? Will this make the customer experience better? Will this enhance the museum in the hearts and minds of our customers? This changed our community involvement strategy, and has made the museum more relevant and interactive with our citizens. Staff is strongly encouraged to get out of the building and get involved. We understand, as Schultz tells his staff, that we can be a force for positive action. It is important to remember our agenda is not the only important agenda and being good neighbors help bring visitors to the Fourth Place. Our Museum Director is Vice President of the county Community Improvement Corporation and serves on the Port Authority Board. Our Museums Operation Manager is the newly elected president of our Downtown Association. Our Event Coordinators attends the Business and Community Association meetings of our neighboring city. Being good leaders is one of the best services museums can give back to their communities. All these efforts result in a snowball effect that makes the museum more of an Icon, and a place where the community connects and spends it time: at the Fourth Place.
4. Put Emphasis on Creating Stakeholders out of the Youth in your Community. Because we are a WWII Canteen Site, we have a special bond with Starbucks – coffee. They are known for coffee, and we are known for serving 1.3 million soldiers coffee at our WWII Canteen – the reason we became a National Historic Landmark. But we take it a step further. In addition to the free coffee in our lobby for visitors, we have free cookies every day for the kids in our neighborhood. After school, we are the place for school kids to visit. As the next generation of stakeholders, they are already discovering the Fourth Place to be very welcoming. We engage our youth through volunteer awards, our Annual Patriot Rally, through internships and over 200 each year who volunteer to work on our Polar Express Rides. We spend a great deal of time writing letters of support for kids to get scholarships, attend college and get jobs, but the rewards are great as kids have discovered that hanging out at the Fourth Place is something not only fun but very beneficial to them.
5. Ignite Emotional Attachments with Customers. People go to Starbucks for coffee and human connections, according to Schultz. People go to Museums searching for that human connection as well, and we need to make sure we are serving it up with love and pride for our history. Following the Starbucks map, we put visitors back into the center of the experience from beginning to end, from arrival to departure. Every step is strategically planned from signage to literature to room placement. We try to anticipate their needs, and will soon be implementing a “Tour Menu” as we have discovered not everyone is interested in the same type of tour. When the customer needs are met, they perceive a greater value in the museum and its brand. Their commitment grows, and their attraction to the Fourth Place increases incrementally. We also make a great effort to "Listen." Instead of just telling our stories, we realize visitors come to TELL their stories.
6. Elevate your Core: Never accept the Status Quo. Starbucks supports the conclusion that they are the undisputed coffee authority. We have adopted the assumption that our Museum Network is the undisputed regional museum authority in our area. We have worked hard to be build the best educated, trained, and experienced museum staff. We are creating a new museum leadership group called MLX: Museum Leadership Exchange, so that we can share our knowledge and expertise with other museums. We have created Leadership Teams to oversee the operations of our museums. The marching orders of all teams has been to constantly elevate the core: never accept the status quo as good enough. We push for a relentless focus on customers and customer experience, as well as differentiation to make us stand out among other area museums. As Schultz advocates, our leaders “get dirty. Get in the mud. Get back to the roots of the business.” We cannot possibly be as successful as we aim to be if we do not excel and lead in our core business. We made sure all staff understood the quality and passion we were looking for within our organization. In short, as Schultz describes, we adopted the winning Starbucks process of telling our story, improving our quality, delivering on our promises, and increasing our attendance, recognition and profits.
These are just some of the areas in which our Transformation Agenda helped to take our Museum from ordinary to extraordinary. In the end, we can confidently say that our Starbucks Model enabled us to reach our goals by building better relationships, increasing the value of our museum, building a better system and finding a balance between traditional Museum operations, innovation and community needs and expectations. We encourage other museums to use the Starbucks Model to untap the potential within their own organizations and within their staff. The guiding principles and culture it creates has the ability to turn your museum into a Fourth Place.
Howard Schults was right: “We do have the ability to touch lives and raise the human spirit, infuse it with emotion and meaning while telling our story over and over again.” He may not have realized he was inspiring museums at the time, but it worked. We will have to buy him a cup of coffee someday and fill him in.
The Dennison Depot Museum Network includes the Dennison Railroad Depot Museum, Historic Schoenbrunn Village, Uhrichsville Clay Museum and a partnership with the Bill-Law-Reed-Huss Farm. The Depot conducts workshops on creating the Fourth Place. The next one will be held Friday, April 26. A Comprehensive Grantwriting Workshop will be held the same day. For more information, email Wendy Zucal.
Wendy R. Zucal, Director Dennison Railroad Depot Museum 400 Center Street, P.O. Box 11, Dennison, Ohio 44621 740.922.6776 work, 330.340.1445 cell, director@dennisondepot.org
