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2011/2012 ISHA Member Directory 

The ISHA Member Directory for 2011/12 has just been printed. We'll continue to keep the most up-to-date revised copy on this page of the website. Download the PDF to your desktop and you'll always have industry contacts just a click away. PDF>>>

Do you have footballs in your collection?  If so, be sure to read the results of an extensive survey completed by the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

The conservation survey of the Pro Football Hall of Fame's historic football collection was funded by a Conservation Project Support grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The goal of the survey was to prioritize the conservation needs of the football collection, create treatment proposals, and re-house the entire collection in storage containers that meet accepted archival standards.

Project survey>>>

Survey Results

2012 Operations Survey 

A survey of International Sports Heritage Association (ISHA) members shows that 50 percent will expand their exhibits or their venue and 39 percent plan to add staff members in 2012, a healthy sign for the industry.  To read the press release and for the full results, click here>>>

2010 Operations Survey 

2009-2010 State of the Industry Survey

Managing for Quality Customer Service in a Sports Museum or Hall of Fame

by George Smith

Current research shows that despite all of the money that has been spent to address the problem of how to attain quality customer services, many museum goers remain skeptical. For those of us who are in the sports museum business, we know that failure to leverage good customer service can be a missed opportunity to build goodwill and to generate repeat visits. To some extent the consumer’s sensitivity to customer service is the unintended result of a world suddenly less personal because of our increased reliance on technology. But our museums are uniquely well-suited to gaining competitive leverage in the "edutainment mix" if we can learn to institute quality customer service initiatives.

At one time, visitor services function reported to me while I was head of administration (operations) for a large science museum. The importance of establishing quality visitor services had just been introduced to the organization about the time that I was arriving; the museum was just starting its "new" customer services training program for front line staff. Looking back, two things really stand out about that process: one is how we spent considerable time "educating and informing" the entire management team, not just the front line team, about the importance of customer services and two, how we reorganized in order to ensure that the frontline staff would be sufficiently empowered in order to carry out and implement the new service standards.

The transition went surprisingly smooth and took less than 12 months to fully implement. The relatively rapid rate of the changeover to a quality customer services (QCS) model was probably helped by the fact that the museum was also undergoing a change from free admission (as it had existed for more than 60 years) to paid admission. Those of us involved in facilitating the change reasoned that the new "fee at the door" would bring higher customer service demands to the operation. But overall our frontline staff was able to grasp the nuances of quality customer service rather quickly. It took the rest of the management a bit longer.

One of the primary obstacles for management was the realization that, even a venerable, well respected museum could find itself having to compete for visitors against a myriad of other forms of "edutainment" ushered in by the rise in popular technology. It was hard for that management team to understand how something as unglamorous and imprecise as visitor services could be the difference between having repeat visitors and not having repeat visitors. In the past, the museum's collection and content had been enough to attract relatively large numbers of visitors each year. But now, seemingly overnight, visitors were paying much more attention to how they were being treated once they came in contact with the museum, either in person or on the Web site.

Suddenly, the entire museum was faced with the realization that it was going to have to treat actual visitors and potential visitors the same. And, it had to start concerning itself with what sort of exhibits and programs and services added customer value.

Several years later, when I moved from the science museum to a sports museum, I wondered if the demand for quality visitor service would be greater, less or about the same. Like many people, I had an image of "sports people" and sports "culture" and, admittedly, it was different from what I had come to expect of visitors to other cultural institutions. But I quickly discovered that sports people are just as passionate about "their sport" as others can be about Einstein or Picasso, sometimes, more so. Therefore, every aspect of the visitor's experience, including customer service, is just as critical to the overall success of a sports-themed venue as it is at any other cultural institution.

Can all of this work for sports museums and halls of fame that are trying to control margins by operating with less staff? In other words, is the QCS model cost-effective? Well, the answer is "yes."  As someone so eloquently put it, "Good customer service cost less than bad customer service!" Cost effectiveness is a byproduct of the value you add through quality customer service. And the value of quality customer service is measurable, whether it is in the form of financial contributions to your institution, survey results or repeat visits. It is a mistake to allow the content of a sports museum or hall of fame to take priority over visitor service, as some institutions now do. Good customer service can make a visit memorable, even when exhibits are broken, content is stale and the home team loses.

Not everybody who comes to a job that requires interfacing with the public -- either as paid staff or as volunteers -- is prepared to provide quality customer service. Let's face it, some people work in museums because they have a passion for the subject matter or the collection. People come to our institutions for a variety of reasons. Only occasionally will you find that the people who apply to work or volunteer in our museums do so because they feel comfortable interacting with an increasingly demanding public. Therefore, any staff that is going to have direct contact with "visitors" -- either in person or on the Web -- needs to be trained in how to provide customer service.

Most of the research tells us that we should start the QCS training process by selecting staff who demonstrates during the interview that they know how to "meet and greet" and "engage" in conversation. Secondly, during the selection process make certain that you probe applicants for their familiarity with content. It may seem obvious, but the ability to be conversant in sports goes a long way towards making visitors comfortable. In many cases you won't need an expert or a scholar as much as a candidate with a lay person's knowledge of the sport and, just as importantly, ability to talk about content. Many organizations try to hire front line staff personnel who have prior experience in customer services. But, in reality, unless the applicant is experienced in providing quality customer service, you don't lose too much by hiring people with little or no formal training in how to provide customer service but who do have a good knowledge foundation of the sport; then, train them yourself in how you want customer service at your museum or hall of fame.

At the science museum where a quality customer service program was successfully launched, we learned that empowerment is the key to attaining and managing quality customer service. Empowering frontline staff so that they are able to engage visitors, determine their needs and facilitate the process of having those needs met or exceeded in your museum is the most important part of customer service training.

The biggest fear many of us have with empowering frontline staff to provide quality customer service is that we worry that the staff may not be sufficiently cost conscious. We fear that they may get so carried away giving good service that they "give away the store." But with empowerment must also come the access to data, data analysis parameters and techniques to measure one's own performance that provide frontline staff with the necessary operating guidelines to attain quality customer service. Leaving frontline staff to operate semi-autonomously and empowering staff to make on-the-spot decisions regarding the visitor's experience is counter-intuitive in terms of what many of us have been taught about how to manage people. Attaining QCS is as much a function of leadership as it is good management. Be willing to evaluate frontline staff on whether they "do the right things" not necessarily on how often they "do things right." Show staff the procedures, tasks and expectations associated with the job, agree on relevant data and measurements, provide them with their own business cards to give out to visitors and turn them loose. Procedure manuals for customer service are good but articulating an institutional philosophy about the value of service, empowering front line staff, and finding ways to measure, works better.

George Smith was the Managing Director for the NCAA Hall of Champions in Indianapolis, Indiana. Before joining the NCAA Hall of Champions he was Vice President for Administration at The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. He also had served on the Board of Directors for the International Sports Heritage Association.

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