You can’t get away with the best attractions, designs, and location if your staffing isn’t on point. Entertainment is a customer-facing, interaction driven market. So, meeting your visitor’s service expectations is a must!
Customers are our life-blood and are the single most important part of our business. They have expectations of us, and we need to devote our efforts to making sure we can meet or exceed those expectations. Each customer chooses to come to our stores, and we are grateful they have selected us to provide them with entertainment. We need to make sure that they will experience extraordinary service and high-quality products for the best possible experience.
In the first 5 minutes our customer forms the view about how the rest of the experience will be for them. Since they have deliberately come into our venue, we should assume that they have a purpose. Getting the initial experience right is one of the most important activities we do. If we get it wrong, we will have to work twice as hard for much longer to create a good impression.
Staff are the link between your location and the public. They must be an ambassador to the business’s value and fun attitude.
Staff should fit the following criteria:
- Well dressed and groomed
- Reliable and trustworthy
- Friendly and outgoing
- Desire to learn and improve their knowledge and performance
- Work hard without supervision
- Always on the lookout for things to do
- Good communication skills
If staff do not fit these criteria then they should be replaced.
Staff should be regularly counselled to advise them of their performance whether it is good or bad.
Staff levels Enough staff should be employed to allow for contingencies such as when staff call in sick or are unavailable. Having some casuals to fill in these gaps is a great solution! But ideally make as many as possible of your team full time, that allows you to spend more time training, and upskilling your team!. As a general rule of thumb, there should be at least one staff on duty for every 30 customers in the premises.
Using your booking schedule as a guide you should be able to estimate the number of staff required for different times in the week and propagate a general weekly staff roster. Make sure to also take into account weather, holidays and events. As these will have a large impact on the business of your centre.
If you are busy it is always better to be overstaffed than understaffed. For the sake of $6-10 extra an hour in wages you could recoup that tenfold if your centre is running more efficiently.
Staff levels are also determined by other attractions and goods sold in the premises. For example if there is a large number of video machines on the premises, staff time will be required to hand out change and attend to machine malfunctions.
Staff are generally entitled to free Laser Tag games while they are off shift. It is desirable that staff have a sound understanding of the game play so they are then able to speak to customers enthusiastically and offer advice. When staff play you must insist on the highest levels of ethics in the game. Staff who cheat or are too ruthless create a very bad image.
A flawless organisation of your operations with staff is vital. After a game if finished the staff need to be ready to help players out of vest, and out of the suit room to view their scores. At the same time another staff member should be putting the new group into their vests and into the game. There is the risk that if a game is delayed to start you start to run late for the next booking. Therefore it is of the utmost importance that your staff are well trained to handle delays and make them up rapidly. A way to mitigate this is with automation of game management.