That a venue cannot provide exemplary guest experiences if the sales, service, and operations teams aren’t on the same page is a fact known well by Caroline Shipps and Eboni Wilson, two industry veterans who have each opened new and substantially renovated venues recently.
The two service sisters have collective decades of understanding that being in lock step is the only way to walk the walk.
The ALSD had to learn more about what it takes to make these two all-stars self-proclaimed “sisters in service”, taking care of their clients and each other.
We saw both of you post about “sisters in service” recently. We gotta know more.
Eboni: Caroline is my sister in service. Her focus is more on the sales and services side and mine is on the operations side, the two of us can't essentially live without each other. It takes both of what we do to accomplish what our guests are going to see, what they're going to feel when they come into UBS Arena. So it's always been very important to me to make sure that I have a great relationship with my sales or service person. I don't think a lot of people take the opportunity to really make sure that from an operations and sales and service perspective that there is a true coordination.
When I came in, Caroline was coming in right behind me and nobody could really figure out the difference between the two of us. So it was like “Wait is this you? Is this her?” From the very beginning we made a pact that no matter what came to one we would make sure that the other person got it so that there was no way that we would miss a step and there would be a bump in the service experience for our guests.
Caroline: Definitely. I think we were really lucky. Like she said, we started a few weeks apart and so both came into a role that I think we both would have liked to start maybe a year, year and a half, two years earlier.
There was a lot that was already set, planned, and we worked together to figure it all out. And as she said, our staff can't be successful and our clients aren't going to be happy unless we are locked up and unless we are on the same page, so I think we've really made it a priority from the start, from our first conversation, to work together on everything.
Eboni: So I deemed us sisters in service. We make sure that you know we have a tight bond and we take care of our guests and each other.
Caroline: We're constantly calling each other, texting each other. “Did you know about this? Did you know about this? What's your thought on this?” and making sure that we are aligned. If there's a priority for my team, we talk it through to make sure that whatever changes we're going to make, she’s aware, and vice versa. If there's something that's affecting our team that maybe we need to adjust on our side so that we can always be successful together and provide the best experience possible, we are in lock step about it.
Eboni: We created a service promise, and the service promise emanates through our premium space as well. And you'll see that in the team members that you have the ability to meet when you come on site for the ALSD Conference. We're not going to tell you about all of it now! But you'll be able to feel our service promise, and you'll be able to feel the essence of the area because that's what our experience is about.
