A patron’s experience of your organisation starts long before they come to view the show. Every encounter has an impact – no matter how good the end product is if the process of getting there has been negative, stressful or frustrating for the customer then they are unlikely to want to repeat the experience.
For deaf, deafened, hard of hearing, blind or partially sighted patrons the customer care experience is even more crucial.
What the patrons say…
“Sometimes it’s easy and other times it can be an absolute nightmare because you’re dealing with different people all the time.”
“The first person we encountered was extremely helpful and knew exactly what to do.”
On an audio described performance: “nobody knew what it was let alone when it was.”
“I’d like not to have to always wait 15 minutes while everyone runs around trying to find the one person who knows where I need to sit to view the captions.”
“I’ve missed many touch tours simply becuase I wasn’t told when I booked or because I arrive and no-one knows what they’re talking about.”
“I can’t tell you what a difference it makes when you come through the door and are met by someone who knows what they’re talking about.”
Disability awareness training should be made available to all Front of House staff as a rolling programme as well as part of the induction process for any new member of staff – Front of House, Administration or Technical departments.
Our experience has shown that a skilled disability equality trainer with an understanding of the arts sector, delivering group face to face training has the highest impact. However over the course of the See a Voice project we found that it was not always possible to guarantee that everyone was able to attend our training sessions or that they would retain the knowledge for when they might next work on an assisted performance.
We developed an online e-learning package that would bridge this gap and could easily form part of an organisation’s induction process for new staff.
http://www.savlearning.com/login/index.php
Specifically designed for the arts sector, any venue or arts organisation can subscribe to the e-learning package for their staff.
For details please contact: info@savlearning.com