This service vision fits right in your pocket
The Challenge
Having renewed their brand strategy, the City of Helsinki had an ambitious plan to create a service model that would translate into a coherent customer experience.
The city was faced with two key challenges. Firstly, to turn the Helsinki brand promise into a consistent customer experience throughout the different city sectors, and secondly, to create a customer service manual that could help establish a common customer service model. The model and the manual were first piloted at Helsinki Art Museum (HAM). The project was supported by the Six City Strategy, an EU-funded partnership programme in the six largest cities in Finland for open and smart services.
Approach
“If all the art museums in Helsinki had the same exhibition, what would make visitors come to HAM?”
HAM’s competitors aren’t just other museums but also various actors in the culture and leisure sector. For HAM, having a genuine and inspirational customer service is the key point of differentiation and driver of growth. Our objective was to get everyone on board with HAM’s positioning as an inspiring museum. Kuudes facilitated workshops for HAM’s customer service personnel in order to crystallise their customer service concept and experience path. The work was closely based on the organisation’s mission, strategy and visual guidelines. The customer service manual was set out to encapsulate the information into a simple yet visually inviting form.
Outcomes
A pocket full of customer experience
It’s not merely about the exhibition – a successful museum experience requires sound customer service. Investing in an excellent employee experience and a coherent employee orientation will result in satisfied customers met with self-assurance and delight.
The project resulted in four distinct outcomes: a handbook, pocket guide and posters for HAM, as well as a scalable model for the City of Helsinki.
Handbook
A comprehensive guide for training new employees.
Pocket guide
A handy pocket-sized guide, including space for employees’ own notes.
Posters
Communication material to signal the core content of the guide backstage.
A scalable method
A system that all other city sectors can use to create their own customer service guides.
The anatomy of a customer service guide
What are the most typical problems encountered in customer service situations and how can we survive them? What are the common rules readily communicated to customers? How can we stay silently present?
The model of the Service Guide designed in the project consists of the following service culture sub-areas. During the test workshops, the model proved to be well suited for other sectors of the City of Helsinki.
Impact
A common guide now and in the future
Introduced in early 2017, and initially being only a guide to the introduction of new customer service providers, it proved to be so popular that the guide was distributed to all HAM employees. It is used as a tool in supervisory work and for developing guidelines.
92 % of customers would recommend HAM
96 % of customers would visit again
100 % of employees have used the guide
+++ Strong professional skills and service attitude – way above average
What did HAM think?
(10–30 second sound bites in Finnish)
Maija Tanninen-Mattila
Museum Director
Jouni Vienola
Service Manager
Customer service representative
“The guide serves as an example of how sound customer experience is produced in practice. The HAM model has already been piloted in the City Environment sector.”
– Heli Rantanen, Project Manager, City of Helsinki, 6Aika
