Case studies : Baltic

Baltic: Customer Experience Project

How the collective impact of the smallest of ideas can make a significant difference to the visitor experience.

Live|work partnered with BALTIC, Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead in North East England to help create and prototype new customer experiences. By working closely with a group of 16 members of staff from different levels across the whole organisation, the project looked at improving the existing customer experience through co-design with the staff.

Searching for opportunity and inspiration

The project began with the staff being given Camera Probes to record what they believed to be good and bad customer experiences both in and out of BALTIC. The results provided the group with a set of key customers ‘needs’ and possible ‘opportunities’ on which to base the new service proposals. Staff were sent out on Service Safaris to explore different types of customer experience, ranging from retail to tourist attractions to restaurants. These experiences allowed the participants to understand how services work outside of BALTIC and reflect on how they compare to the services that BALTIC provides.

Using the needs and opportunities identified the staff rapidly generated over 140 ideas for how to improve the BALTIC visitor experience. These sketched ideas ranged from small detailed changes in the existing customer experience to large scale ambitious projects for the future.

Prototyping the quick and inexpensive way

Having voted on which concepts to take forward, the staff created rough prototypes of their ideas to test on the public and other BALTIC staff in real time during gallery opening hours and quickly assess their viability and success. Each group recorded the impact and findings from their prototyping session, which in turn enabled them to plan implementation across BALTIC.

Sustaining the cultural change

The staff successfully prototyped four service propositions and are currently planning the next stage of development. In order to sustain the use of service design in improving the customer experience, live|work introduced an Ideas Wall to help all staff members track the development of existing and new service ideas they may have. And enable them to make their idea’s progress visible to all BALTIC employees.

The response from staff has been integral to a real shift in culture in the organisation; and the collective impact of even the smallest ideas has made a significant difference to the visitor experience.

“It’s amazing how many great ideas we’ve all come up with that I personally feel will set a precedent and make BALTIC the envy of other arts organisations! It’s also made me re-evaluate my role as a consumer of services in my day-to-day life. When you give or receive praise it’s brilliant, but you can also see reasonable criticism as being even more valuable, a chance to improve; in most cases criticism happens because people care, not because they want to be difficult.”
Staff Member, BALTIC

Contact: Sean Miller or Rory Hamilton on 020 7377 9620

www.balticmill.com

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