Directing People To Restrooms Can Increase Visitor Satisfaction

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Back in May I wrote about research Colleen Dilenschneider and the folks at IMPACTS derived from the National Awareness, Attitudes, and Usage Study regarding what factors help them to feel welcome.  Briefly, it was when they they saw themselves and stories/images relevant to them on the stage or on display as well as seeing staff, audience members, and marketing materials that reflected themselves and their community.

In mid-November, Dilenschneider and her team posted the results of responses about what made an experience dissatisfying and the role staff could play in mitigating those issues. (subscription required) They separate the dissatisfying issues out for exhibit and performing arts entities.

For exhibit based organizations, the top five issues were: customer service (e.g. rude staff), parking, onsite technology issues, access issues (eg. traffic), other cost factors (eg. non-admission costs). Admission costs came in sixth.

For performance based organizations, the top five issues were: Rude patrons/guests, customer service (eg rude staff), access issues (eg. traffic), restroom availability, ticket policies (subscriber priority/exclusivity).

I was somewhat surprised to see the subscriber priority/exclusivity as an issue. Not only haven’t I seen that come up as an issue before, with all the reports of declining subscription and ticket sales, I wouldn’t think people would feel subscribers were snatching up all the good seats versus the past. I would really love to get more information about this. I half wonder if cultural organizations are doing a better job of communicating subscription and subscription benefits in recent years and newer audiences who weren’t accustomed to attending performances with high subscription rates are noticing the same chunk of preferable seating is occupied for every performance across months. They may also conflate this disappointment with resellers snatching up all the seats for concerts.

While I said I was only listing the top five, there were a couple results further down the list that caught my eye. Seventh on the list was onsite technology issues (no wifi/slow wifi). For exhibit based organizations, onsite technology issues were related to inability to buy tickets onsite and difficult to use digital engagement tools which sounds like a combination of bad wifi and experience design.

The bad wifi complaint is an indication of people’s expectations. Especially in the context that the eighth issue for performance events is not being able to use your phone. To some extent bad wifi may be more of a feature than bug since performing arts venues often prefer people not use their phones. Allowing other people to use their phones was 15th on the list of factors that detracted from people’s satisfaction. Dilenschneider suggests that other people using their phones may also actually be part of the aggregate rude patron behavior category that appears at the top of the list.

The way staff mitigates the issues are what IMPACTS categorizes as “Personal Facilitated Experience” (PFE) (my emphasis):

A traditional museum cart experience can provide a PFE. A volunteer showing you to your seat at the theater can provide a PFE. An entryway greeter can provide a PFE. So can a stationed volunteer, a wayfinder, or even a particularly attentive clerk at a museum store. Personal Facilitated Experiences are often unexpected, and they are considered PFEs if a visitor is able to recall that interaction after their visit is over and identify it as meaningful to their experience.

Shows, talks, or tours – while certainly providing value to an overall experience – do not constitute a PFE, as the market considers PFEs powerful due to the personalized attention and one-on-one nature of the interaction. While these other types of encounters are an efficient way of interacting with groups and larger numbers of guests, they do not always provide the kind of personalized experience that leads to the steep increase in overall satisfaction that is the topic of this article.

As with many things, nuance is important. While tours are not perceived as PFE, a behind the scenes experience was the number one PFE giving satisfaction for exhibit based organizations followed by exhibit interpretation. I think it would be easy to categorize those things as tour-type activities but patrons perceive it differently. Complimentary admission for a revisit and complimentary gifts were the next most satisfying experiences for exhibit based entities.

For performing arts organizations cast interactions and behind the scenes experiences were at the top of the list followed by complimentary gift and wayfinding as specific experiences.

The article goes into some detail about what constitutes each of these experiences. Just for clarity, I did want to excerpt the explanation for two of them:

A complimentary gift or product need not be expensive, but instead provides a moment of personalized interaction or it may facilitate an experience. Remember the plastic wings that some of us kids received when we boarded a plane? That’s an example. Our Content Strategist, Bethany (who is also one of this article’s editors) has a sweet story about taking her firetruck-obsessed son to the Western Reserve Fire Museum and receiving a red plastic firefighter hat from a kind staff member. Her son loved the hat and wore it all day at the museum – and kept it until it broke nearly two years later! In this case, Bethany believes that her satisfaction increased even more than 2.5%, the average for a complimentary gift.

[…]

Behind-the-scenes experience … This need not include actually showing people a private room, giving a glimpse behind the stage, or providing special access to a private elevator for a guest who might need it…More often, this is perceived to be behind-the-scenes information. Unlike exhibit interpretation, wherein the content shared is perceived to be “on script,” a behind-the-scenes experience is perceived to be “off script.” These PFEs represent a moment wherein a guest feels that it’s their lucky day to come across this particular staff member willing to share information that seems as if it is not given to just anyone. Security guards at art museums often deliver among the most impactful PFEs of this type, as they are able to share behind-the-scenes stories with visitors…and many guests still don’t expect to have positive, personal interactions with these individuals.

United States Of Arts Participation

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In October the National Endowment for the Arts Quick Study podcast (transcript available) took a look at how arts participation broke down across the United States via data collected in 2022 by the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts.

What I found most interesting was how participation and attendance of different arts and cultural activities varied from state to state. While we might think of places like NYC as being a cultural center in the US, that isn’t necessarily the case. In fact, New York State’s numbers were lower than one might expect though NEA Director of Research and Analysis Sunil Iyengar partially attributed that to the fact there were still Covid restrictions on Broadway productions during 2022.

According to Iyengar,

…higher than average attendance was clocked by seven states. Utah, Vermont, Nebraska, North Dakota, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Per capita, Washington DC also drew more arts participation than most states

Utah, Vermont, and Nebraska vastly outstripped the national average for attending at least one live performance. Massachusetts exceeded the national average for art museum attendance and Vermont and DC exceeded the national average for overall museum attendance.

Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Montana had higher levels of people attending stage plays or musicals (school based performances were not counted). South Dakotans attended dance in higher levels than the rest of the nation.

When it came to music, Massachusetts was on top for classical music, DC turned out for jazz, New Mexico was triple the US average for Latin, Spanish, and salsa concerts.

Iyengar said the survey didn’t drill down on every performing arts discipline and used some catch-all categories. Indiana topped attendance in that category.

“…types we do not ask about on the survey, these may have been rock or pop concerts, rap or hip hop, or even comedy shows, circuses, or magic shows. That’s a kind of lump all category. We find that 37% of Indiana residents went to one of these types of events in the last year compared to 21% of adults in general. In Michigan, another Midwestern state, the rate was also high, 34%. And out East in Delaware, it was 35%.

Of course, someone has to generate all that creative content and the survey measured that as well:

…the states that did particularly well in terms of arts creation were Wisconsin, Maine, Montana, Vermont, Nebraska, Utah, Oregon, Washington State and Ohio. All these states had above average shares of residents who personally created or performed art…. Wisconsin, where the rate of arts creation in the course of a year was 73%, versus 52% of the U.S. as a whole. Wisconsin had an especially strong showing with people doing dance, taking photographs for artistic purposes and making visual art in general. And Maine, where 71% of people made their own art, included a lot of folks working with textiles, weaving, crocheting, quilting or doing needlepoint, knitting or sewing.

The full report, 50 States of Arts Participation: 2022, can be found on the National Endowment for the Arts website. There is a quick drop down menu to show some highlights for each state, but the report does a much better job of providing specific detail.

One of the things I take from the survey is the suspicion that many people down really perceive themselves as participating in artistic and creative practice. When I see that Hawaii pretty significantly is below the national average for participation in social or artistic dancing and playing a musical instrument, it doesn’t correspond with my experience living there where everyone seemed to at least dabble a little in both if not regularly perform or take instruction.

One Wicked Sing-A-Long Debate

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For the record, I am not on the side of singing along with the movie in the theater.

That said, I think it is to the theater world’s credit that there is a notable debate raging about whether people should be allowed to sing along during screenings of the movie based on the Broadway musical Wicked.

The movie is very much based on the musical since it is only part 1, though it isn’t advertised as such, and even as Part 1 has a longer running time than the original musical. According to some reviewers the movie doesn’t seem to drag even though it is being stretched out.

Part 2 will apparently contain new songs by composer Stephen Schwartz which may mitigate concerns about people singing along to some degree when that movie comes out.

One of the obvious solutions to the sing-a-long issue is for movie theaters to offer audience participation screenings and no audience participation screenings. After all the same issue came up about a year ago with the Taylor Swift concert movie where some fans felt like there was too much audience participation while others were upset that the next screening over seemed to be creating a more communal experience than they were having. If theater were paying attention the last time, they could proactively address those concerns for Wicked.

I should probably amend that first sentence of this post to say I am not on the side of a sing-a-long when I am not expecting that experience. I have definitely tried to license the sing-a-long version of Song of Music and have hosted a number of screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show where participation is expected.

As I said, I think it is great that the debate is occurring with Wicked because it will likely raise awareness about the Broadway show and perhaps generate curiosity about other Broadway shows.

Though stretching the story out across two movies creates a tenuous situation. If the extended version is boring and drags, that could reflect badly on the original show. (I’m looking at you movie adaptation of The Hobbit) If it is well received, it could create expectations that a Broadway show half the length (at least) can’t meet.

AI May Not Be The Best Tool For Writing Personnel Reviews

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We are constantly told about the hazards of inputting sensitive personal data into unsecure websites. That is pretty much what you are doing when you provide information to an AI bot and ask them to create something for you. For this reason there are some significant concerns associated with using AI to write annual reviews and evaluations. Anything you provide the AI is being used to train the AI to do a better job and has the possibility of being retrieved by third parties.

I recently had a post on ArtsHacker discussing these issues in greater detail. In that post I note using AI for annual reviews is a viable option as long as you steer clear of identifiable information like names, don’t reference things like medical conditions, or use discriminatory language related to protected classes like age, race, national origin, etc.

Dangers Of Using AI For Annual Reviews