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Case Study
National Leadership Development and Guest Service Improvement Project
Six Flags Theme Parks is the world's largest regional theme park company. Six Flags operates facilities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. In the latter part of 2005 Six Flags appointed a new CEO, CFO, and new executive leadership team. This new team immediately recognized the need to improve guest services and the guest experience at its facilities. Along with other internal steps on their path to improvement, in January of 2006, Six Flags partnered with SASI in an effort to improve both guest service and the overall guest experience.
Focus
The primary problem, as identified by Six Flags and its consumers, was below average guest services and a below average guest experience.
Solutions
Understanding that a company's culture controls many aspects of guest service and guest experience, SASI partnered with Six Flags in order to saturate the company's culture with a guest service and guest experience mindset. SASI custom created three national programs in order to achieve the goals of improving guest service and the guest experience. These programs were disseminated to over 3000 employees in a multi-faceted approach.
Component One: Basic Empowerment Training
SASI and Six Flags both know that when management and supervisory personnel are focused on leading people, rather than managing people, front line employees begin to strive for individual excellence and organizational achievement. With that knowledge, the full time management staffs at 10 parks participated in a Basic Empowerment TrainingTM (BET) exercise.
The BET is a series of psychological and logic based processes leading participants through a variety of mental, physical, and emotional activities that allow them to understand the emotional intelligence of leadership while simultaneously empowering them to uncover the leader within themselves!
The overriding goal of the BET is to create leadership within the management team allowing them to effectively support, coach, and mentor the front line employee who is charged with the responsibility of creating the overall guest experience.
Component Two: Front Line Employee Orientation
SASI partnered with Six Flags to overhaul and recreate its front line employee orientation program. SASI created an experiential learning course that was designed to:
- Engage employees in the learning process
- Clearly communicate the vision and mission of Six Flag Theme Parks to every employee
- Define appropriate guest service behaviors
- Create active participation while practicing guest appropriate behaviors
- Create baseline cultural agreements between employees and Six Flags for execution of policies and standards
The front line employee orientation program was delivered as a train-the-trainer program for all human resources trainers in the company.
Component Three: Conflict Resolution
Realizing its need to improve relationships with disappointed patrons, Six Flags also requested SASI to provide specialized Conflict Resolution Training to key personnel at each park. The goal of this training was to provide front line personnel, in guest critical positions, with tools and skills for effective conflict resolution.
The conflict resolution program was delivered as a train-the-trainer program for all human resources trainers in the company.
Accountability and Follow Through
Our experience has taught us that developing solutions to problems is fairly easy; it is implementation, commitment to change, and lack of accountability that are usually the roadblocks on the path to improvement. SASI supported the targeted improvements of Six Flags by developing base line accountability processes for the parks. At the conclusion of our developmental processes, SASI provided Six Flags with detailed feedback specifically relating to the improvements targeted during our time together.
Next, SASI measured Six Flags for improvement using a behavior sampling technique. The primary focus for these samplings was front line employees. The results were given to management in order for them to coach the appropriate front line employee behaviors.
The behavior sampling technique is used to observe people's behaviors at random intervals in order to identify and classify appropriate or inappropriate behaviors regarding guest and employee interaction. Inappropriate behaviors are practices that can, and often do, lead to guest dissatisfaction and guest complaints and that can cause harm or loss.
Results
The results of the partnership between SASI and Six Flags have been realized in four key areas. The results in 2006 were:
- Historically higher consumer satisfaction rating using the GSS indicator system
- Higher per capita spending for all four quarters
- Improved employee retention
- Improved behavior sampling scores
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