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Positive feedback at Glasgow Welcomes workshop

23 Jan 2012

Word is spreading fast about the success of the Glasgow Welcomes initiative. At a recent Trainer Development Workshop, Glasgow Service with Style Project Manager Stella Callaghan revealed that she receives many phone calls from tourism representatives in other regions asking for information about the service excellence project.

Addressing a room of delegates at the Glasgow Thistle Hotel last Friday, Stella said: “It’s rewarding to know that other cities and regions have heard about the success of the Glasgow Welcomes initiative and now want to find out more so that they can improve their own tourism offering.

“We are delighted that other tourism regions want to follow our service excellence strategy and example, however, just now we remain focused on Glasgow and improving still further the city's visitor experience.”

The success of the Glasgow Welcomes initiative didn’t appear to come as a surprise to the network of Glasgow Welcomes trainers attending the session.  Indeed, during the first 30 minutes of the half-day workshop the group were keen to reveal their own Glasgow Welcomes training experiences.

Positive Glasgow Welcomes feedback

The delegates – part of the 28-strong group of In-house Licensed Trainers for the Delivering Service Excellence initiative – represented a range of city hotels and groups, cafes and attractions.

Liz Davies, café manager at the Arches in Glasgow revealed to the group: “For me, when delivering the Glasgow Welcomes training to our own staff, it’s so rewarding to see how they come to understand the importance of their own attitude to the customer experience. The training really helps staff to fully appreciate that a positive attitude will increase custom and spread the word about good customer experience.”

For Natalie Laing, food and bar trainer at the Blythswood Square Hotel, it’s the “wow factor” section of the staff training that she has found the most rewarding. She said: “The Wow Factor part of the training really helps to focus the staff and gets them thinking about all kinds of different ways that they can impress guests. I am amazed by what staff come up with – and we know that the wow factors are the details that guests will remember and come back for.”

Margaret Hart, HR manager at Millennium Hotels told the other delegates how impressed she has been with the way that the Glasgow Welcomes training enthuses staff. She said: “The training really helps to switch staff on to what they can do to improve the customer experience. And once a few staff have this understanding, then it just seems to snowball within the organisation. It’s the cascading of information and the pride in their work that is so good for the hotel.”

Other positive experiences discussed at the workshop include:

  • The handling of customer feedback in a positive way
  • Improvements in the customer journey
  • Vastly improved knowledge about Glasgow and its events and attractions
  • A better understanding of the customer experience.

Updates to the Glasgow Welcomes: Delivering Service Excellence Course

As well as providing an opportunity for feedback from different hospitality and tourism organisations, the Trainers' Development Workshop communicated to trainers some of the updates and developments of the Delivering Service Excellence Course.

Ian Hunt, the lead trainer for the GW programme, and Stephen Williamson, of Scottish Enterprise, have been working together to develop new ideas for the in-house training delivery. Ian explained to the delegates which slides in the PowerPoint presentation had been refreshed and why.

Ian said: “The course delivery is just as you all learned when you attended the training for trainers workshops. But we have now updated some of the slides following feedback from trainers and also to keep up to date with new and emerging city events and visitor comments.

“We are very keen to sell the ‘ambassador’ concept to staff within the hospitality and tourism sector in Glasgow. It’s the idea that staff can each be ambassadors and can make a big difference to the customer experience. Our course is aimed at helping them to think pro-actively and to encourage a pride in their work and a pride in Glasgow.

“We really think this is working already but we want to emphasise this more.”

Listening to the chat during the coffee break and at the lunch following the workshop, it was clear that the training delivery updates were going to prove useful to the trainers themselves. “This has given me renewed motivation to continue with the training of our staff," said one delegate.

“I like the ambassador concept. That is a strong message to give to staff,” said one of the Glasgow Life trainers in the group.

The trainers also remarked:  “I know now that other hotels and businesses are behind this initiative and so it makes me feel like we’re working towards a better customer experience in a collective way.”

“It’s good to go back over the course slides and take in the refresher notes. This is very useful when it comes to successful delivery of the training.”

Networking and support

For each of the delegates at the short workshop, there was also a chance to swap stories about training and successes among various different businesses. Many took the opportunity to network and there were discussions about offering cross-business support, which Glasgow Service with Style is keen to encourage.

One of the trainers was keen to sit in on the in-house training being offered by a more experienced trainer at another business. It was agreed that this kind of support would be an excellent way to increase confidence when training staff.

Look out for future events

There will be more Glasgow Welcomes Trainer Development Workshops in due course, so please do keep an eye on the website. All the delegates found the workshop to be very useful and re-invigorating. If you are keen to become an in-house trainer for the Glasgow Welcomes programme check the events section of the website.  The next course takes place in March.