Museum Audience Insight

Life Stages of the Museum Visitor - AAM Webinar and Book!

We are delighted to have worked closely with AAM in the publication of our new book Life Stages of the Museum Visitor, available from the AAM Bookstore, and in our upcoming AAM webinar on the same subject:

AAM Webinar!
Understanding Life Stages of the Museum Visitor
June 24, 2009
2-3:30 pm (Eastern)
In collaboration with the AAM Committee on Education (EdCom), the AAM Committee on Audience Research and Evaluation (CARE) and The AAM Press

Led by:
James Chung, President, Reach Advisors
Susie Wilkening, Senior Consultant and Curator of Museum Audiences, Reach Advisors

Why are seven-year-olds especially important to museums?  What are Museum Advocates, and how do they differ from Core Visitors to museums?  And what is going on with ultra-wired Generation Y and museums?  Delve into these questions and more as Susie Wilkening and James Chung share their research from over 30,000 Core Visitors to museums, just published in their new book from the AAM Press, Life Stages of the Museum Visitor:  Building Engagement Over a LIfetime.  This webinar will help you understand your museum's audiences, their needs, and how to better meet their expectations.

To register, go to:  http://www.aam-us.org/getinvolved/learn/understandingmuseumaudience.cfm
$25 AAM Member
$189 Non-member

To purchase a copy of the book go to:  http://iweb.aam-us.org/Purchase/ProductDetail.aspx?Product_code=I255

More Questions, Thoughts on Museums and Customer Service

By now, you have heard it a few times.  In our research of over 30,000 Core Visitors to museums only one in ten think the staff really cares about them.  

 

Last week we hosted a Museum Conversation on customer service to delve into why customer service is important, and what we can do to better serve visitors to museums.  We were joined by two fantastic panelists:  Cindy Solomon, a customer service guru with Solomon and Associates, and Paul Orselli, Chief Instigator at POW!

 

(During the call, Cindy offered to share with listeners her myths on customer service, as well as additional questions.  Unfortunately, her spam blocker appears to have automatically deleted a handful of these e-mails.  If you did e-mail her, please try again as she does not want to be unresponsive!  Want a copy of her myths?  E-mail Cindy at cindy (at) cindysolomon (dot) com.)

 

We fielded a ton of questions on the call, and there were many excellent questions we did not get to.  To address them, we are including them below, and over the next few days we will tackle as many of them as we can.  And if you have some thoughts on any of the questions, feel free to click on “comments” at the bottom of this post and share what you do (for those of you reading this via e-mail subscription, please go to our blog at http://reachadvisors.typepad.com to add comments).

 

Staff:

• Please discuss the issue of museums shifting their thinking to consider themselves as service organizations.  How do you characterize the pressures to do this?  How do you see it manifesting?
• What are some recommendations for communicating museum guidelines and "rules" in a service-friendly way? What is an example of a mindset that can be communicated to security officers ... so instead of the job description being "protect the art" what should we communicate to protection officers their responsibility is so that they have that service in the forefront of their mind?
• I'm eager to know if volunteers were considered "staff" in regards to the survey.  Was there a difference in perception when it came to paid staff versus volunteers or did visitors view them both in the same light?
  
  • Response from Susie:  Generally, visitors do not distinguish between paid and unpaid staff when it comes to customer service.  If they are treated rudely by a volunteer, it makes just as much a difference to their experience as if it was a staff member.    
• What advice can you share for getting buy-in from the curatorial side of the museum?  What arguments are effective to explain how the content work of the museum relates to issues of customer service/visitor experience?  Can you share examples of how the frontline staff has enlisted the assistance of curatorial folks? 
• You mentioned on the call measures for evaluating job candidates re: customer service – specifically that some focus on the % of time the candidate smiles.  I once read that Biltmore will only hire guides who smile upon the first introduction. If the candidate does not, the interview politely continues but always ends in “no thanks.”  Any other ideas that you have?

Visitor amenities, perceptions, and motivations:

• How do the panelists assess service and evaluate the visitor/customer experience?  Are there any surprising or particularly powerful lessons that they have learned doing this?
• Can you speak more about the interesting parallel here with enthusiasm/passion and good customer service, and enthusiasm and the perception of authenticity.
• Any suggestions to help average parents enjoy their visit more, especially when their primary motivation is for their kids?  Could be as simple as extra benches for parents to rest, or as complex as trying to get parents more engaged in exhibits and science content.  We talk a lot about reaching adult audiences at ASTC ... I'd like to start with these visitors, who are after all, adults who just happen to be with their kids!
• How do the panelists understand and describe the way that service fits into the question of visitor satisfaction in the museum context?

Learning from others (or, not reinventing the wheel):

• I know that the non-profit world learns a lot from the commercial world re: service and satisfaction.  Is there anything that museums (npo's) can teach the private sector?
• Can the panelists recommend any research/articles on service and visitor satisfaction (their own or other's work)?
• What professional journals do the panelists feel do a good job of reporting on visitor/customer research as it relates to the service/experience industry (travel, attractions, museums, cultural sites, etc.)?
  

If you have any thoughts or questions on customer service, feel free to click on “comments,” below, and add to the conversation!

"Why Should We Care?": Museum Conversation

It is a stunning result.  Overall, in our studies of 31,000 museum-going visitors, only 1 in 10 respondents feel that the staff at their local museums really cares about them.  Combined, it is 10.74%, to be exact.  And this is from our Core Visitors, who support and visit regularly. 

These results have instigated some interesting discussions on our blog, so much so that we are hosting a free Museum Conversation today on the subject:

Why Should We Care?
Museums and Customer Service
Friday, January 16, 2009
1:00 EST / 10:00 PST
Special Guest:  Cindy Solomon, Customer Service Guru, Solomon & Associates
Guest Discussant:  Paul Orselli, Chief Instigator, POW!

Of our blog readers, Paul was one of many with particularly strong views in the dialog on this topic, so we have invited him to join the dialog to continue his instigation before we open up the lines for questions and comments from call participants.

Only 5 spots are left in today's FREE conference call session.  To snag a spot, please e-mail Susie Wilkening at susie (at) reachadvisors (dot) com.

And if you have questions you want to submit to the conversation, simply click on “comments” below.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)

Museum Conversation: Science Museums, Museum Advocates, Trustworthiness, and Narrative

Over the past few months we have been digging deeper into Museum Advocates, who they are, how we can identify them, and how we can increase their numbers. 

In our recently completed study of science museum visitors, conducted in partnership with ASTC, we explored the idea of Museum Advocates in more detail, and what they mean to not only science museums, but museums of all types.  What role do science museums play in growing more Museum Advocates?  And what role do other types of museums, including history museums and art museums, play as well? 

In our next free Museum Conversation we will be sharing the results of our study and explore these very issues. 

"Preserve Past, Teach Present, Inspire Future:"  The Relevance of Science Museums in Today's Communities

Thursday, October 23
1:00 EDT / 10:00 PDT

To join us, e-mail Susie Wilkening at susie (at) reachadvisors.com to RSVP.  Space is limited for this free conference call, so RSVP soon!

Museums and Web 2.0? Conversation Link

We are delighted today to host another free Museum Conversation conference call and find out what exactly are social technologies, and what does that mean for museums.  For this Museum Conversation, we're thrilled to have Charlene Li of Forrester Research, the nation's top analyst on Web 2.0 social technologies, joined by Nina Simon of Museum 2.0, a fabulous blog for those interested in Web 2.0 applications for museums.  This should be a good one for anyone interested in how to increase engagement with your audience online.  If anyone is interested in advance reading, Charlene's recent book, Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies, is one of the current bestsellers at Amazon.  

Charlene and Nina have generously provided presentation slides and an article that they will be referring to during the call.  If you are registered for the call, the links are:

Download charlene_li_groundswell_slides.pdf

Download nina_simon.pdf

If you have questions that you would like to ask Charlene and Nina, please feel free to submit them to the blog by clicking on "comments" below."  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)

Gen Y in the Mile-High City

Planning on attending the AAM or ACM meetings in Denver?  Want the scoop on our latest research and findings?  Join us at one of our free research sessions to learn more and swap notes! 

Generation Y & Museums

Generation Y, that generation of teens and twenty-somethings, is plugged in, extraordinarily diverse, and will soon outnumber their Baby Boomer parents.  But in our recent survey work, fewer than 25% reported they enjoy visiting museums. Ouch! 

Find out what sets that 25% apart, what kinds of museums they do enjoy, and delve into what is up with their non-museum-going cohorts. 

Friday, April 25
12:15 PM MDT
Reach Advisors Hospitality Suite
Adams Mark Hotel (ACM Hotel)


Monday, April 28
12:15 PM MDT
Reach Advisors Hospitality Suite
Hyatt Regency (AAM Headquarters hotel)

Tuesday, April 29
7:30 AM MDT
Reach Advisors Hospitality Suite
Hyatt Regency (AAM Headquarters hotel)

We will also be offering an encore of our recent research presentation:

Authentic Respite in an Unreal World:  The Resonance of Outdoor History Museums

This spring we partnered with 13 outdoor history museums to survey their visitors to find out why they value these types of museums, what types of interpretations methods they prefer, and what other types of museums they visit.  And we also asked them what authenticity meant to them, creating some mind-spinning and fascinating results. 

From self-curated experiences to 1st-person interpretation, we will explore what works for the different audiences that visit museums. 

Monday, April 28
3:45 PM MDT
Reach Advisors Hospitality Suite
Hyatt Regency (Headquarters Hotel)

 

Space is limited in these free sessions, so please RSVP soon by e-mailing Susie Wilkening at susie (at) reachadvisors.com.  Refreshments will be provided. 

You will be in Denver but cannot make our sessions?  Let us know and we will try to share the data with you at a better time.

Want to get together over a cup of coffee just to chat?  E-mail Susie Wilkening at susie (at) reachadvisors.com.  We are more than happy to swap notes. 

Audience Research Museum Conversation - Part II

It makes sense. If you understand your audiences, you better understand why they visit your museum. And if you better understand why they visit your museum, you can serve your audiences better.

But figuring out how to be a visitor-centered museum can be challenging. How do you ask them what they want? How do you know they are telling you what they really think? How do you do research on a tight, or non-existent, budget?  How do you help visitors feel that the museum is important to them and their communities?

To dig into these issues, our March Museum Conversation focused audience research, and our guest panelists came from two very different museums with very different budgets. Yet the goals for both organizations were to serve their audiences better. Here are a few takeaways.

• It is all about the visitor experience.  Matt Sikora, of the Detroit Institute of Arts, shared with us that all aspects of the visitor experience, from making them feel welcome and comfortable to helping them feel a more intimate relationship with works of art, must be addressed to ensure that both expectations, and your mission, are fulfilled.  At the DIA, they wanted to anticipate and understand the deeper motivators to visit in order to inform the museum's reinstallation plans.  The goal is then to facilitate those experiences, and reinforce those motivators, for your visitors, thereby increasing visitor satisfaction, to hopefully yield return visitation - and research can help determine if you are satisfying those visitors . . . or where you are falling short.
  
• Repeat visitation, and the word-of-mouth of those visitors, is key.  Both Matt and Bruce Courson, of the Sandwich Glass Museum, talked about how if the visitor experience is good, visitors are far more likely to return, and far more likely to tell others to visit.  By discovering, and then focusing on what brings visitors to the museum in the first place, you can help create the positive experience that drives the repeat visit and the positive word-of-mouth.  As Matt said, it does not have to be the blockbuster exhibition but it does have to address why guests visit on a deeper level.  And as Bruce noted, advertising is far less effective, and far more expensive, than good word-of-mouth.
• Audience research does not have to be expensive. Bruce uses his parking lot as a venue for audience research.  By posing as a tourist and asking exiting guests “Excuse me, I only have about an hour – is it worth go through here?” he has learned what works . . . and what doesn’t work, in his museum. This information greatly informed their recent expansion and installation of glass-blowing demonstrations. It was, and continues, to be a simple, yet effective, way of discovering what visitors are thinking.

We would love to hear more from you on this topic! How has audience research helped your museum?  What struggles are you having tapping into visitor motivations? Any questions you would like to throw out or any insights you would like to add? To continue the conversation, just click on the “comments” link below

Finally, our thanks go out to our guests who shared their time and thoughts during this call, and to those of you who submitted questions to our guests and listened in. 

Audience Research Museum Conversation

**** Please note the time of the call has changed to 2:30pm EDT / 11:30 am PDT ****

We're back with some new Museum Conversation conference calls for the year, and our first one will focus on a topic that we know is on the minds of some museums following a New York Times article that ran last Wednesday.  The article, "Museums Refine the Art of Listening," illustrated various ways museums are using audience research and market research to tune into community attitudes and audience behaviors.

The article left some people looking for more background and detail, so we're going to use that as a launching pad for our next Museum Conversation on Tuesday, March 25 at :30 pm Eastern / 11:30 am Pacific.  Our guest panelists will include:

• Matt Sikora, Associate Educator, Evaluation, Detroit Institute of Arts
• Linda Wilson, Director, Audience Research and Evaluation, John G. Shedd Aquarium
• Bruce Courson, Director, Sandwich Glass Museum

So come join us with questions such as:

• What kind of research do they do in house?  With what kind of staff?
• What kind of impact have they seen from their research?
• What have been the biggest pitfalls in the research they've fielded?
• Plus, anything you wish to ask the panel!

As you probably know by now, these Museum Conversations are free conference calls held (almost) monthly. To RSVP for our Tuesday, March 25 Museum Conversation, just email susie(at)reachadvisors(dot)com.

To submit questions to our panel please click on “comments” below and submit it to the blog. After the call is over we will be posting a recap and continuing the conversation via the blog.

We hope you can join us!

Curating a Brand Experience - Part II

In our November Museum Conversation on Curated Brand Experiences, our savvy panel of five brand curators shared with us great strategies and tactics for ensuring that your visitors have the best experience possible at your museum. All the panelists agreed that brand is not just the name, logo, tagline, and advertising, but it is every touchpoint a visitor has dealing with a museum, before they arrive, while they are there, and after they leave. All those combine to create the brand experiences. The bad news is that this is a lot, but the good news is that it does not take a large budget to successfully curate the brand experience at your museum. Here are a few takeaways:

• Don’t be bashful about your brand. As Darren Macfee, Executive Director of the Lincoln Children’s Museum noted, the marketing should not stop at the front door. Instead, take those efforts to attract visitors and extend the branding inside the museum walls so that visitors always know where they are, what the museum is about, and the role of the museum in the community.
• Hire the most enthusiastic, passionate staff possible. LeAnne Ruzzamenti, of the Crocker Art Museum, commented that interactions with front-line staff can make or break a visit, so hiring those that are excited and curious about the museum will help ensure that they pass on that enthusiasm and knowledge to visitors. She also noted that hiring front-line staff tends to almost be an after-thought, but that instead it is one of the most critical hiring decisions staffs at museums can make.
• Brand is not a picture, but a personal connection. And as Phillip Bahar of the Walker Art Center explained, it only has meaning when it is filled with a personal experience with a product, exhibit, program, or event.  That is, the brand is only formed when it helps people connect to art, science, history, and each other.  Our challenge is then to create that personal connection between the visitor and the museum. And linking back to LeAnne’s comments on staff, it is the Director and the executive team that must set the tone for the employees to deliver on the brand promise.
• The Museum can be the third place. At the George Eastman House, as Eliza Kozlowski shared, the café and store were remodeled to blend together, with lounge areas, so that visitors could have a sense of a “third place" (after home and work), especially in the evenings for theater goers. This amenity area has become the hub of the museum, and it is where people congregate and relax at some point in their visit. This sense of “third place” can also be heightened by giving members special stickers to wear during visits, which alerts staff to the fact that these individuals have invested in the museum. The warm welcome they then receive only heightens the sense that the museum is one of their places.
• Retail has become theater, entertainment, education, and experience, said Alison Worthington, a senior marketer at Starbucks, and that has changed people’s expectations so much that for many, the choice is between going to a museum or going shopping, because the experiences are not as different as they initially appear. So every detail of every touchpoint must      be perfect because you are only as good as your last experience, and if you can incorporate surprises and delights (such as random free admissions or “pay it forward” programs when customers are given free admission passes to give to someone behind them in line) into those touchpoints, then your brand will only strengthen.

We would love to hear more from you on this topic!  What successes have you had at your museum on these issues? Any questions you would like to throw out or any insights you'd like to add? To continue the conversation, just click on the “comments” link below

Finally, our thanks go out to our guests who shared their time and thoughts during this call, and to those of you who submitted questions to our guests and listened in. 

Curating a Brand Experience

Branding seems to be a hot topic at museum conferences lately, but branding is a lot more than name, logo, and tag line. Your brand is your organization.  And a brand experience is what visitors have every time they interact with your museum.

But what is a curated brand experience? 

Well, for a museum, a curated brand experience is the carefully selected, mission-based programs, events, exhibitions, communications, and staff encounters that come together to create an experience that is ideally unforgettable for the visitor. And it is doing so with the goal of providing experiences so powerful that visitors return for more, encourage their friends to join them, talk about it well after that encounter, and engage with the museum more meaningfully over time.

So how do you curate that experience to ensure that it is the experience you want your visitors to have? This Tuesday, November 27, at 1:00 EST/10:00 PST we will be hosting our next free Museum Conversation conference call to explore that very question. Joining us will be four savvy museum brand curators:

 

• Darren Macfee, Executive Director, Lincoln Children’s Museum
• Eliza Kozlowski, Director of Communications and Visitor Services, George Eastman House Museum - and chair of PRAM
• LeAnne Ruzzamenti, Marketing Communications Director,  Crocker Art Museum
• Phillip Bahar, Director, Marketing and Public Relations, Walker Art Center

Additionally, giving us a perspective from the for-profit side, we will have Alison Worthington of Starbucks Corporate Marketing.

We’ll discuss observations from a tour during the last AAM conference where we had a chance to see how various retailers such as Starbucks, American Girl and Apple ‘curate’ their brand experiences. We’ll also discuss what translates and doesn’t translate for museums, and field questions from participants on the call.

To submit questions to our panel please click on “comments” below and submit it to the blog. After the call is over we will be posting a recap and continuing the conversation via the blog.

To join us for the free conference call simply e-mail Susie Wilkening at susie at reachadvisors dot com.

Finally, the November/December 2007 issue of Museum News includes an article written by Susie on Curated Brand Experiences – check it out or let us know if you need a copy!