Background

For many years Boston Garden was home to the Boston Celtics and Boston Bruins. Owned and operated by Delaware North, a family-owned conglomerate, Boston Garden had a long-standing history, tradition, and reputation in major league sports, particularly with basketball and hockey.

A few years ago, Delaware North, wanting to know how Bostonians felt about the sports arena, conducted focus groups with fans and attendees to obtain information about their perception of the major league facility. The feedback described Boston Garden as relaxed, fun, informal, and uniquely Boston. However, the facility was also described as filthy, old, unsafe, unresponsive, unaccepting of minorities, and threatening. In particular, some of the complaints were focused on the service at the sports arena. Attendees of Boston Garden felt there was an attitude of complete indifference toward the customer on the part of ticket takers, ushers, concession personnel, retail kiosks, security, and management.

Boston Garden employees were also interviewed. Because games were always sold out, there was no pressure to focus on the customer. People would come to the games regardless of the service they received. As a result, some employees felt that managers were too “transaction oriented.” Managers never asked their employees how they felt, only about how sales were going.

Process/Solution

Jeremy Jacobs, Chairman of Delaware North, and senior management from Boston Garden decided they wanted to become a state-of-the-art, customerfriendly, quality focused, accessible, world-class, and multi-use entertainment center. And in order to do that, they felt a change in attitude, as well as in the physical environment, was needed. In 1993, ground-breaking for a new facility started, and in 1994, the new Fleet Center was born.

To complement the new facility, Delaware North partnered with The Ken Blanchard Companies to initiate a customer-service training program so that employees transitioning from Boston Garden, as well as new employees, could improve Boston Garden’s service reputation and create a raving fans culture at the new Fleet Center.

Focus groups were conducted with a wide variety of current Boston Garden employees to determine the current perception of service, the barriers to providing raving fans service, management’s ability to facilitate good internal service, and the perception of Boston Garden’s current values.

Senior management and Blanchard discussed the differences they wanted to see between the old Boston Garden and the new Fleet Center facility. An initial two-day meeting was conducted to establish a vision and purpose and determine how the new Fleet Center could improve service and build revenue. During this two-day period the executive group brainstormed what their values should be and how the values would affect managing the business.

Blanchard helped the Fleet Center understand how to put the vision that had been created in the hearts and minds of key people into a more crystallized form that employees could understand and follow. The new vision consisted of the following three main parts:

• Purpose—why the Fleet Center was in business
• Values—how the facility would be successful
• Image—how the customer perceived his experience

Caring for the customer, professionalism, and ethics were among the behaviors that would address the main concerns that surfaced in the focus groups. Together, Blanchard and Delaware North helped coworkers, new and old, understand that they were not simply servers, cleaners, or ushers, but people who had the responsibility of enhancing the entertainment experience of every customer coming into the building.

However, the vision of creating a new customer-service culture was not without its challenges.

• Boston Garden was an immense organization with a deeply ingrained history. Two-thirds of the employees at Fleet Center were coming over from the old Boston Garden. Most of these workers had been with the old facility for decades, within a culture that, traditionally, did not incorporate the vision and values that management created. In addition, there was the complication of working with over 10 rather ingrained and inflexible unions. When Delaware North started customer-service training— incorporating the philosophy that people were not simply employees, but owners of the new Fleet Center—there was initial skepticism among employees.
• Since the new Fleet Center was privately owned, it put Delaware North in the position of borrowing money for the new facility, which was not normal for the company. There was increased pressure to sell suites and club seats in the arena, as well as booking a wider variety of entertainment venues beyond the Bruins and Celtics.
• Teams that played at the Fleet Center no longer paid rent for using the building. Because Delaware North was not willing to share the revenue of the building with the teams, it was absorbing the total cost of the building’s operation.
• In the old Boston Garden, there was minimal air conditioning, so the building was a seven-month operation. With the new, year-round facility, employees had to adapt to working the entire year.
• There were cultural issues. The Boston population was changing so that 20% consisted of African Americans, Asians, and Latinos. The Fleet Center wanted to make these newcomers feel welcome.

To address these issues, Blanchard facilitated the Legendary Service Leader Assessment with all senior managers. With this assessment process, leaders could pinpoint and understand their behavior as it related to service issues. The assessment was given to department heads as well. It revealed that while management believed they were giving employees the freedom to make customer service-related decisions, procedure or logistics within the facility prevented employees from doing that.

During the two months between the closing of the old Boston Garden and the opening of the new Fleet Center, Blanchard conducted over 30 Raving Fans training sessions, which focused on improving internal and external customer relations. Initially, the sessions included more of the newer employees who had never worked at Boston Garden. These people were motivated and charged about the opportunity to work in the new facility. Eventually, some of the “hold-outs” from the old facility—the ones who had been around for many years—attended the sessions and began to see their value and benefits.

Outcome

The Fleet Center has already measured the results of its training. While the organization continues to improve in its food service, food quality, and prompt service categories, courteous service was rated high by customers. For the Fleet Center, creating a vision and providing employees with customer-service training has

• Helped all employees understand the importance of raving fans service
• Created a sense of professionalism among employees
• Given all employees a blueprint for creating raving fans
• Allowed employees to work within a common ground, help each other with job difficulties, and work together to come up with solutions
• Encouraged management to look at human issues in addition to financial goals
• Facilitated a team attitude toward service
• Increased per capita expenditures
• Become an ongoing part of Boston Garden’s culture