If your venue is struggling to attract or retain staff, but you still need to offer guests the same level of service, don’t panic because you’re not alone. In August 2021, there were 10.4 million job openings, and the number of people leaving their jobs rose to a staggering 4.3 million.
But there are plenty of ways to keep your venue running as smoothly and efficiently as possible, even in a competitive talent market.
Keep reading for our step-by-step guide to enhancing your venue’s operational efficiency in the face of staffing challenges.
Introduce system automation
Relieve your staff from time-consuming tasks or reduce the need for extra staff altogether by adding alternative ways for your guests to check-in faster. One such method is adopting newer technologies you may not have previously considered using, such as Self Serve Kiosks (SSKs) and QR code systems for ticketing.
Automated check-ins allow staff to focus more on creating meaningful interactions with guests while speeding up queue times. And as a bonus, automated systems can increase upsell opportunities and positively affect the Guest Experience.
Automating processes across your venue is a guaranteed way to create operational efficiencies.
Understand your guests better
If you don’t have time to create long, dull surveys that fail to reach your guests at the right time and suffer from low response rates, you should consider leveraging technology like the Guest Experience Score by ROLLER.
The Guest Experience Score is a powerful sentiment analysis tool that allows you to survey, monitor, and improve your guest’s experience. It uses a promptly delivered pre-built survey to gather rich, actionable insights. It also plugs straight into your existing ROLLER Venue Manager platform and enriches your data using existing customer sales and booking information.
Did we also mention you will still have only one central system to manage your guest feedback?
The Guest Experience Score is a quick and efficient way to identify issues regarding guest feedback, boost your guests’ experience, and can be done with minimal resources. Pretty neat, huh?
Refocus your efforts
With less staff on hand, it’s time to start making smarter decisions about how and where they can be better placed to truly serve your guests’ needs.
As discussed earlier, adding automation tech means you can free up staff to offer a better guest experience, while also speeding up queue times. Identifying other core areas where your staff offers the greatest value to the guest experience and reallocating people to these points will provide high-touch customer service will ensure you are making the most of the talent you have.
Prioritize staff training
Perhaps you attract temporary staff who are eager to work but are only available for a short timeframe. Or your need to quickly train a large group of new team members. Either way now is a great time to review your staff training processes to train your employees more quickly.
By putting the power back in the hands of your staff, you give them the autonomy to solve problems they would typically escalate to management. Employees then grow more confident in their role while allowing higher-level team members to refocus their efforts towards higher priority tasks.
Another way to create operational efficiency is to ensure your staff knows communication can work both ways. Your frontline team has the greatest insights about what works, what doesn’t, where your bottlenecks are, and how best to refine those pain points to become more efficient. Ensuring your staff has the confidence and ability to share these suggestions and concerns is critical to the growth of not just your venue, but your team as well.
Promote health and safety in the workplace
In a period where health and hygiene are paramount, ensuring your staff feels safe returning to work should be at the top of your priority list!
Promote physical health support in the form of encouraging mask-wearing, providing social distancing markers as well as frequent hand sanitizing stations to keep both staff and guests healthy while also offering mental health support during times of stress, if required.
As you can see, there are plenty of ways to create efficiencies across your venue, even when staff numbers are on the lower side. These methods are sure to ease pressures on current staff while enhancing your overall guest experience.
