A reminder about metadata

Let's remind ourselves of a question we posed in Chapter 2, ‘What is Metadata?’ Are we stuck in 1967? Are we stuck in the Summer of Love, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, mini-skirts and the Ford Mustang (although we are both rather partial to the newer version of this car)? Perhaps more pertinent, are we currently stuck with an understanding and usage of metadata set by the initial thinking of 1967? Haven't we moved forward in our thinking? In Chapter 2 we also briefly explored the definition of ‘meta’ (‘after’, ‘beyond’, ‘more compre hensive’) and aligned it with metaphysics: beyond the physical laws of physics. So again we pose the question: shouldn't we be taking metadata beyond the accepted laws and definitions cast in the mould of 1967?

Again looking back to Chapter 3, we had two definitions of ontology and we discussed the second in some detail: ‘a set of concepts and categories in a subject area or domain that shows their properties and the relations between them’. We said that we would return to the first definition: ‘the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being’. This first definition makes the link between ontology and metaphysics and nature of the ‘being’ of data. This may help us to understand the inherent value in data and how it changes. It may also help us to better understand the very nature of data and explore those concepts of the ‘single version of the truth’ or the ‘golden source’.

Data and metaphysics

Let's move the conversation along and step into the world of metaphysics. Consider the ‘old school’ view of the atom, its orbiting electrons and nucleus. This is synonymous with our current view of metadata: a few pieces of information (electrons) circulating around the data point (the nucleus), in very structured and defined paths. The electrons (the metadata) occupy very defined paths and orbits, and perhaps we can see these as the types of metadata: structural, descriptive and administrative, or perhaps even as the W7 framework. The orbits occupied by the electrons (metadata) are also very structured, so perhaps they are the ontology of the metadata. Applying these concepts from the old-school view of the atom to metadata demonstrates that our current view of metadata is very rigid and fixed.

Why hasn't the paradigm shift happened before?

Before we look at a couple of examples, let's recap our paradigm shift on metadata. We now see metadata as a Halo around the CDE. The CDE is the nucleus; the quantum element attached to it, defines its purpose and the metadata in the Halo either adds value to the CDE or has the potential to add value. The data in the metadata Halo is assigned four values:

We are pushing the concept of metadata beyond the limits of the 1960s definition to demonstrate that metadata in its own right has the potential to deliver value to the business.

This all might seem obvious and straightforward: we’ve always had metadata and we’ve always had some concept that data provides value to the business. But have we really? How much value do organisations really put on the metadata that they already have, let alone that they might collect and use? Across the wider business it is likely very little; and also likely that they don't leverage the value locked up in the metadata.

We are only now starting to talk about data having value and demonstrating that value; the idea that the metadata could have a demonstrated value as well is lagging behind in our thinking.

There are a number of reasons why organisations are still stuck in the 1960s with the understanding about metadata.

• 1 There is a lack of creative thinking about metadata as a source of potential value. This was discussed in Chapter 2. Metadata has been viewed an unexciting chore that must be dealt with, with no obvious RoI but plenty of overheads, looked after by the technology teams.

• 2 Organisations have not been accustomed to searching for and ingesting new and different types of data that may or may not deliver value to their existing datasets.

• 3 Linked to the above, but a reason in its own right, is a fear of failure. Organisations aren't prepared to invest in a ‘data project’ if there is no clear RoI – and even more so if they can't show that it has already effectively been done somewhere else.

In the second part of this book, we will move into examining the real meat of delivering the visitor experience: the day-to-day management of an operation and a team.

In Chapter 6, we examine the procedures we use to manage an operation and the all-important role of the Duty Manager. I’ll suggest some best practice, and a case study from world-class heritage attraction Stonehenge will show how service recovery can turn a situation round even when things go wrong.

Chapter 7 will explore the most important role of the Visitor Experience Manager: managing a team. We’ll look at motivation and performance management, both good and not so good.

In Chapter 8, I’ll use a case study from a previous role at Kew Palace to further explore how we look after our teams. In this instance, I will focus on the emotional wellbeing of our teams, and specifically, what we can do to safeguard this when dealing with exhibitions, collections and programmes that include challenging content.

Chapter 9 deals with that mainstay of museum visitor experience: the guided tour. We’ll look at the pros and cons of guided tours and use a case study from the highly successful Hidden London tours from the London Transport Museum to explore best practice.

Finally, we’ll look at what happens when that day-to-day management goes straight out of the window! Crisis management practice has been heavily impacted by the experience of COVID-19, so Chapter 10 reviews our learnings and suggests new best practice for keeping our crisis management plans and processes ready to go.

One area where Visitor Experience teams are always called to play a leading role is crisis management. In any unexpected incident, you’ll find the knowledge of your team is crucial – as well as their practical experience of visitors, of the site and of what can be relied on to go wrong next! In this chapter, you’ll find out how crisis management practice has developed in museums and heritage sites, how the COVID-19 pandemic has turned that all on its head and, most importantly, what you can do to prepare your teams for the crises of the future.

Crisis management in museums: a history

To understand how to plan for what might happen in the future, we first need to look to the past. This is because all crisis management is based on past experience.

Having grown up in 1990s Scotland, when I took my first London museum job I was fascinated by the stories of my long-established colleagues. In amongst the ghost stories and historic staff scandals were the memories of operating in the years when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) posed a clear and present threat in English cities. My colleagues told me tales of evacuations, bomb scares and coded warnings. These features were the warp and weft of the crises of the time, and we still see their legacy today in museum crisis management plans.

On 11 September 2001 our understanding of terrorism changed. Coded warnings and anonymous phone calls were the luxury of a previous era. Counter-terrorism focused on suicide bombers and mobile phone-detonated devices; and museums did not find themselves exempt from these concerns. On 7 July 2005 bombers carried out an attack on the London transport network. However, at trial, the court heard that before the attack the perpetrators had also carried out hostile reconnaissance at a number of visitor attractions, including the London Eye and the Natural History Museum (Hough, 2008).

Having recruited and trained up your dream team, it's time to turn our attention to the rest of the visitor experience.

Creating a new experience is unlikely to be a solo effort; in museums we work in collaboration to design and deliver every step of the visitor journey. In these early discussions, it's really important to centre the visitor in all decision making. In this chapter, we’ll explore one of the best tools we have to do this: the visitor journey map.

Why create a visitor journey map?

Most Visitor Experience professionals will be familiar with the concept of a visitor journey map, and for good reason. It's important for all of us, no matter how big or small our organisation, and regardless of our role within the museum, to take a step back and understand the visitor experience from an outside point of view. Of course, this shouldn't be something that happens just at the start of developing a new experience, so even if you’ve done this exercise before, it's worth revisiting. Museums are like eco-systems: the smallest change somewhere in the organisation can have a knock-on impact on the visitor offer, and it's good practice to anticipate this before it negatively affects the visitor.

If you haven't been through this process before, it's a simple enough exercise to carry out. Creating a visitor journey map just means sitting down to plan out the touchpoints of your visitor offer, thinking about what you want your visitors to experience at these touchpoints, and then seeing where the gaps in service are. To do this, you’ll need two important tools: a clear vision of how you want your visitor experience to look and feel; and an objective sense of what the current reality is (you can find out more about this in Chapter 12, ‘Measuring the Visitor Experience’).

At the end of this process, you’ll have your visitor journey mapped out. You’ll have some idea where problems might arise, and you might even know how to fix them. This clarity is exactly why it's important to go through this exercise collaboratively.

Although there are an increasing number of virtual museums these days, most of the museums we work in remain bricks-and-mortar buildings. There are, of course, lots of advantages to this: for many heritage sites, the bricksand- mortar and what once happened within them is the whole point of the visitor experience! But a physical building brings with it physical limitations. Many heritage sites were never designed, in form nor fabric, to welcome large numbers of visitors per year. Even in the largest, newest sites there is a finite capacity to the volume of people we can host.

These limitations have led to the development of an entire science devoted to how we can best manage capacity in our museums. The world of ticketing systems, pre-booking technology, and crowd management can often feel like a slightly intimidating body of water; deep, unfathomable and often murky. But it's well worth diving into, because applying just a few visitor management techniques could streamline the overall experience and make on-site processes much easier for your teams. In this chapter, we’ll take a look at some of these techniques and how they can make for a smoother, richer and above all safer visitor experience.

Capacity management

The first step to capacity management is knowing what the capacity is. There are a few different factors that might influence this. The first and more important will be the fire capacity. This is the number that the Fire Risk Assessment for your building says you are legally permitted to have in the building at any one time. It should take into account things like the activity undertaken by visitors (will people be standing or sitting, dancing or walking, eating or drinking alcohol?) and the number of fire exits, stairs, internal corridors, etc. Your Fire Risk Assessment is a critical document, so if the museum doesn't have the in-house resource such as a Fire Officer to carry it out, it's important to seek outside assistance from a consultant.

Once you have recruited your dream Visitor Experience team, the next step is planning for their induction training. Delivering a thorough and well thought-through induction is crucial; both to welcoming new colleagues to your organisation and to giving them the tools they need to get started in their new job. However, it's important to know that we shouldn't let the learning stop there: training and professional development should be an ongoing part of any job. We’ll discuss that more in Part 3.

The induction period is of the utmost importance when it comes to setting the right tone for the employee experience. For museums that are open all year round, the period right before new staff start work is the longest uninterrupted period of time you will get to work with your team away from the floor, so it's well worth making the most of it. Most critically, in the induction period, you demonstrate the culture in which you expect your team to work, so the negative impact of delivering a rushed, ill-considered induction period can be huge.

Some museum and heritage organisations I have worked with or for spend up to a couple of weeks on new staff induction, and some as little as a couple of hours! Of course, every situation is different, and you will need to consider the amount of information you need to impart to your new team. One new staff member will obviously take less time, but if I am inducting a new cohort of Visitor Experience staff, I will probably set aside a week. In group inductions you are not only imparting the tools and information new staff need, you are facilitating the formation of important relationships: professional connections between you and your team, between them and their new colleagues, but also personal friendships and relationships that may outlast their time at the museum. It's probably the most valuable week they will spend at the organisation.

This part of the book is focusing on developing the visitor experience; in other words, assessing current performance, identifying ways of improvement and managing your teams and your resources to get you there. The first step of this undertaking has to be measuring the visitor experience you are delivering now. This chapter discusses some of the methods that might be used to gain such a measurement, and how the data you gather can be used to inform the way forward.

Museum evaluation

Measuring the quality of visitor experience is one part of the much bigger topic of museum evaluation, an area of research that has grown considerably in the last 20 years. In some cases, this has been driven by the requirements of funders such as the National Lottery Heritage Fund as they ensure that key goals are being met, but also by our increasing desire as museum profes - sionals to ensure we are staying relevant to our audiences’ needs. This includes measuring the visitor experience.

If you want to learn about museum evaluation more broadly, the Association of Independent Museums (AIM), Museums Galleries Scotland (MGS) and The Audience Agency (2021a) all have great free online resources. You can find links at the end of the book. For now, because museum evaluation is such a broad topic and we will be focusing on a relatively narrow section of it here, I thought it would be useful to provide a quick description of some of the terms commonly used:

• • Primary research: This is direct research, straight from visitors to you.

• • Secondary research: This is often desk-based research, using secondary sources such as historic evaluation data.

• • Quantitative research: This type of research looks for data that can be expressed in numbers. It is great for measuring how many, or how much, but less good at telling us how or why.

• • Qualitative research: Rather than focusing on numbers, this type of research ‘uses broader questions and themes and patterns’ (Parsons, 2020, 4). This data is better at answering the ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions.

• • Segmentation: Segmentation seeks to understand visitor behaviour by categorising people into groups based on similar characteristics.

Many museums across the world would not be able to offer the experience they do if it wasn't for the support of their volunteers. This support can range from a volunteer offer that adds value to the operation of a full staff team, to an entirely volunteer-run and -managed organisation. Wherever your museum sits on that spectrum, there's no doubt that volunteering is such a huge part of any museum visitor experience that it deserves its own chapter.

In the following pages, we’ll explore the use of volunteers in delivering the visitor experience, and how you can get the best out of your volunteer team. For the purposes of this, I’ll be focusing on how to manage a volunteer team alongside paid staff, although I know there are many small museums that are run entirely on a voluntary basis. Hopefully, some of the advice below will be useful for all concerned.

How to use volunteers

One of the first questions when considering volunteering in museums is how or when to use volunteers.

There are many reasons to bring volunteers into your organisation. They may bring new skills, knowledge and experience that you don't currently have in your employee pool. They widen your reach as an organisation, because if volunteers are socialising, gaining skills or having new experiences through you, it's all part of your engagement. This can then spread further, as the National Council of Volunteering Organisations (NCVO) point out on their website: ‘Volunteers are often part of the communities you work or fundraise in. By giving them a great experience, you can inspire them to become your greatest advocates’ (NCVO, 2021f).

One reason that shouldn't be a factor in using volunteers is the idea of ‘free labour’. This motivation can arise (unsaid or not) in museums in times of financial stress, for example after the lockdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. As the Heritage Volunteering Group (HVG) have stated:

Museums are for everyone. This is one of the most fundamental principles of working in museums today, and it's something that every single person working in the organisation plays a role in delivering.

When it comes to welcoming our audiences on site, and ensuring a great visit for everyone, our front-facing team members are at the coalface of delivering this principle. They are part of a team we have come to call ‘Visitor Experience’.

Or, at least, some of us have come to call it that.

One of the hardest things about writing this book has been the definition of Visitor Experience. The team that looks after visitors, front-facing staff and the day-to-day operation of the museum has different names in different places. Visitor Services, Visitor Engagement, Operations, Front of House? Those are just the most common names; there are many more. Staff working on the frontline also have different names: Visitor Assistants, Warders, Hosts, Explainers, Front of House?

Not only that, but to add further confusion, the teams that make up this department might be different too. Sometimes these departments might include Security, or Retail, or Facilities Management. Sometimes they won’t. Sometimes, in smaller museums, these are all the same people anyway.

We all have different preferences for what Visitor Experience means, but for the purposes of writing this book, I have had to come up with a couple of standard definitions.

For me, Visitor Experience is the name given to the people in the museum who look after the overall on-site visitor journey, ensuring that people who come to visit our museums have a safe, easy and enjoyable visit. I have come to split this responsibility into what I call the ‘hard’ Visitor Experience: the operational procedures, wayfinding, ticketing, and those twin banes of every Visitor Experience Manager's life, toilets and lifts. Then, we have the ‘soft’ Visitor Experience: our engagement with and delivery to our visitors; how we make our visitors feel welcome and personalise their experience through our interactions with them.

So, whilst sorting out definitions and names has been the tricky part of this book, the joyful, inspiring, life-affirming part has been writing about how we take on these responsibilities to look after the Visitor Experience.

This section of the book is all about setting the vision and taking responsibility for developing the visitor experience at your organisation. However, this doesn't mean it's something you can do alone. Museums are always a collaboration. Different parties hold a stake in that vision, including staff, volunteers, trustees, audiences who visit all the time and audiences who haven't yet set foot in your museum. So, when it comes to developing the visitor experience, it's important to bring in different voices all the way through.

A really useful way of doing this is to develop and deliver a plan that sets out the organisational approach to Visitor Experience, brings in feedback and other views to articulate the current reality and sets the future direction.

Developing a plan like this helps you:

• • bring in different voices and opinions

• • develop a clear picture of where you are and where you want to go

• • agree on what success looks like and how you will measure it

• • plan and commit the resources you need to get there

• • get buy-in from different stakeholders within the museum

• • demonstrate the value of the visitor experience to the organisation and other stakeholders

• • demonstrate how delivering on your visitor experience objectives can help realise the wider organisational vision.

Some museums will call this plan a ‘Visitor Experience Strategy’. It might be a lengthy stand-alone document, or for others it may be a smaller part of an overall business plan. Some museums have a whole suite of ‘strategy’ documents, some won't have any. It really doesn't matter what format your Visitor Experience Strategy takes. Although in this chapter we’ll look at some examples of how different museums and heritage organisations have articulated their strategies, what I’m really hoping to do is inspire you to have a deep think about where your visitor experience is going, and give you some tools to bring others along on the journey.

What is a Visitor Experience Strategy?

A good definition of a Visitor Experience Strategy comes from the introduction of the National Museum of Wales's own Strategy:

Given that the most important element of delivering the visitor experience is the visitor-facing staff, it follows that the recruitment of that team will need to be considered with the utmost thought and care. In this chapter, we’ll look at how you can attract great candidates, run a fair and inclusive recruitment process and consider different ideas for selecting your team.

Types of hiring

The first thing to think about is how you will be hiring your team; in other words, the contract they will be on.

There are many types of contracts that you might want to consider, depending on the seasonality of your operation. For example, if staff are only needed over the summer, it would make sense to have a fixed-term contract. However, if needs are more likely to flex throughout the year, it would be worth looking into a mix of permanent and casual contracts. For full-time employees who work shorter hours in the winter for operational reasons, think about annualised hours. This means that not only would they get paid the same all throughout the year, your costs stay even too.

Whatever type of contract is chosen, the important thing is that it works for the business and that it works for the employee. Zero-hour contracts are an example of where, historically, this has not happened. The abuse of zerohour contracts is well documented. An interview published in The Guardian in 2017 reported that zero-hours workers can feel ‘disposable’ and even ‘bullied’ (Williams, 2017). It's true that if used properly these contracts can work for both parties; however, more often than not they can be seen as exploitative, especially if workers are expected to maintain availability without the promise of hours. Museums and visitor attractions have tended to move away from this kind of contract, and instead you should aim for an arrangement that benefits both the employer and the employee.

In the past few years, I’ve seen a lot of museums use agency staff for visitorfacing teams, and even been aware of organisations contracting out the whole department.

Whilst people may be drawn to visit a museum by the exhibitions and collections, we know that the single biggest factor in delivering an exceptional experience and driving repeat visitation is the performance and behaviour of frontline teams. To quote the much-used maxim of Bernard Donoghue, CEO of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, it's about ‘staff, not stuff’ (Donoghue, 2019).

It follows, therefore, that the most important part of managing the visitor experience is managing people and performance.

Performance management is sometimes understood as an HR process that often deals with the negative aspects of managing people; disciplinary procedures and managing people ‘out’. However, like most topics I’m exploring in this book, performance management is much broader than this. It covers the managing of positive performance as well as negative, and takes in motivating teams (especially important during the quiet months of a museum operation) as well as ensuring that we as managers are developing the skills we need to support others.

Performance management should not be seen in isolation, but in the wider context of museum life. There is a clear connection between organisational culture and how staff are performance-managed. An organisation that has to deal with lots of negative performance challenges will very often find the root of the issue in the wider culture and, likewise, an organisation that generally treats its employees well will find itself with fewer disciplinary issues to contend with.

It's also important to see performance management as one part of the whole employee journey. In this book, we cover recruitment and induction in Part 1, performance management here in Part 2 and continuing professional development in Part 3. But it's really important to remember that these activities all fit together into the life cycle of one employee, and that one section can and does impact on another (Figure 7.1).

One of the most effective things that can be done to make sure your visitor experience is constantly evolving and improving is to foster a culture of innovation within your teams.

When we talk about innovation, the tech sector is probably the first thing that jumps to mind. Even when people talk about innovation in the museum sector, they often focus on technological advancement. For example, when describing the use of innovation by recipients of Art Fund money, an article in The Guardian in February 2022 talked about development of apps to make collections remotely accessible, interactive exhibits and the launch of virtual field trips (Bakare, 2022).

However, innovation doesn't necessarily have to mean high-tech and highbudget. Merriam-Webster simply defines innovation as ‘introduction of something new’, whether that be a device, method or idea (Merriam-Webster, 2022). So, you don't need to be Apple or Google to be an innovative organisation. You just need to be open to trialling new ideas.

The benefits of innovation

Innovation isn't something that should only happen in the board room. Great ideas can come from anywhere, and if you are looking to solve problems in your visitor operation, what better think tank than the people who work on the frontline of that operation every day? If you are open to innovation from all levels in your museum, you’ll gain access to the wide range of knowledge and experience in all your employees.

Not only that, but fostering a culture of innovation has great benefits for employee engagement. By encouraging new ideas, you can demonstrate that you place value on the thoughts and suggestions of your team, and that you are willing to try things out to solve the problems that are important to them. People need to feel that they have agency in their work. For frontline teams, whose work is often restricted to specific locations and times, it's really important to find authentic opportunities to give them that. Being able to see an idea through from beginning to delivery is a great development opportunity for your employees, and we already know that if you can give your staff opportunities for genuine engagement, they are likely to stay engaged longer, and ultimately stay with you longer.