Background

Surrey County Cricket Club (Surrey CCC), renowned for its iconic venue, The Kia Oval, identified a key opportunity to enhance its visitor experience through a customer feedback survey. The survey revealed a need to improve the welcome and service provided by the club’s security staff, stewards, and ticket office employees. In response, Surrey CCC set out to elevate the overall match-day experience, aiming to ensure that every guest receives a warm welcome and leaves with a positive impression of their time at The Kia Oval.

To address this, Surrey CCC wanted to implement a comprehensive training programme that would elevate the standards of customer service.

Our solutions

The collaboration between Surrey CCC and People 1st International began with a detailed scoping session. We worked closely with the club to understand their unique challenges and specific goals for the training. This involved analysing feedback from the survey, discussing the club’s expectations, and identifying areas that required improvement.

Based on this thorough understanding, our curriculum experts developed a bespoke training programme. This programme integrated proven elements from the WorldHost training, fused with customised content designed to address Surrey CCC’s particular needs.

The content focused on three main areas:

• Defining exceptional customer service: The training started by helping staff understand what constitutes outstanding customer service, setting clear expectations for service quality.
• Club-specific service standards: Participants learned about the specific customer service standards at Surrey CCC and The Kia Oval, ensuring that they understood how these standards aligned with the club’s brand and values.
• Individual roles in the visitor experience: The training emphasised the importance of each staff member’s role in creating a positive visitor experience. Staff were guided on how their actions – from the first impression to the lasting memory – could significantly impact the overall visitor satisfaction.

Outcomes and impact

Initially, four one-day workshop sessions were held, training a total of 37 staff members. We carefully selected the most relevant trainer from our team of over 100 WorldHost trainers to deliver the programme, opting for one with experience in similar businesses to ensure they brought both industry context and enthusiasm to the training.

The diverse group of participants included individuals from multiple departments, allowing them to gain a comprehensive perspective on the customer journey. The training was designed to foster a unified approach to service excellence, ensuring that every interaction from ticket purchase to the food and beverage experience contributed positively to the visitor’s overall impression.

In early 2024 we revisited the Club to review their plans for delivery ahead of the start of the new cricket season.  Feedback indicated that a shorter, half-day format would be more effective for the year ahead, particularly for engaging temporary and casual staff. In response, we revised the programme to fit a half-day format, focusing on the most essential elements of the training.

This adjustment involved streamlining the content by removing less critical elements and shortening some activities. The revised programme also reduced the maximum cohort size from 15 to 12, allowing for more interactive and manageable sessions. The aim was to maintain the quality of the training while accommodating the club’s operational needs. Our pilot delivery of the revised programme showed that the adapted training approach successfully met the club’s needs, providing a more flexible and efficient solution for enhancing customer service.