Employee helpfulness and courteousness, an overlooked PR potential in most museums?

Joe Hoover — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 02:33:22 +0000

When my sister was in town I took her back to see our old high school. It is a beautiful 1930s gothic building that one time housed a cloister. But times change and the cloister closed and the school has since seen many changes including an addition with a new gymnasium. Both her and I wanted to see the changes that had recently occurred. We parked and walked around the exterior looking at the recent additions to the building when a maintenance person, probably checking up on who these strangers were on the grounds after hours, asked us if he could help. We explained that we were alumni and were checking out the new changes. Not only did this man engage us and let us know of all the changes that have taken place to the building he gave us an impromptu tour of the building showing us what the cloisters were now used for, updates to the commons, the theater, and even the updates to the fire safety system. Needless to say we were impressed not only by the changes to our old school but by the polite helpfulness of this man who undeniably went above and beyond his job description. I later sent in a unsolicited donation for his troubles.

My sister, who also happened to be the director for the National Eagle Center, commented that you can’t buy that kind of public relations and an employee like that is the best PR and organization can have. She herself had a similar situation when in the early days of the National Eagle Center when she gave an impromptu tour to someone that showed up just as she was locking up for the day. This person was so impressed that they became not only a great volunteer for the center but also a very generous donor as well.

This brings up an issue that I have noticed with several museums. Yes, the front desk people whose jobs may be dependent on being polite and helpful are cheery but what about the rest of the staff? What about your director, your curator, your exhibit designer, your web designer and yes your maintenance staff? Chances are if it is not their job, they are not. While they may not be rude and dismissive (sadly some are) are they proactively looking to help visitors or going out of their way to be polite? Are non-customer service staff

Museums have small marketing budgets (at least most). One of the greatest marketing tools they rely on and one of the most effective is word of mouth. One of the cheapest PR tools out there and the most effective, is good employee interactions with customers. Some of the extra good deeds I have spied at the Minnesota History Center during my time here have been an employee on their way home offering to return a borrowed wheelchair to the front desk from the parking lot; walking a visitor in the rain out to their car with an umbrella; helping carry a visitor’s tray from the cafeteria to their table; talking time to help visitors get to where they need to go; numerous people opening doors for visitors; etc…

I worked in a hospital which placed great emphasis on employee etiquette and courteousness. Good etiquette and courteousness didn’t happen there by chance, the hospital did quite a bit of employee training on the subject, if nothing else employee got it that this was considered both important by the organization and meant to be practiced by all.

So what does all this have to do with online marketing and PR? Well, in my next post I will talk about the overlooked PR potential of employee helpfulness, etiquette and courteousness in the online environment.

The Nyargle » Cheap

Employee helpfulness and courteousness, an overlooked PR potential in most museums?