Case study - Recruiting Welcoming Staff

Cadbury World

Cadbury World in Birmingham had its busiest year ever in 2009, with 575,000 visitors. The chocolate is a big draw, of course, but a VisitEngland quality assessor described the attraction as “exceptionally well supported with good customer service and a strong commitment to maintain standards”.

Debbie Bisseker from Cadbury World says that recruitment and training are vital to good customer service: “We have 45 permanent staff and around 30-35 seasonal staff who are dealing with customers directly, either in the exhibition, in the chocolate-making demonstration or in the shop. During the recruitment process we move them around: we give them team challenges, ask them to do a presentation, hold a traditional interview, and test them with role play. It’s important to see how they deal with people in different circumstances.”

Debbie and one of her colleagues run Welcome All and Welcome Host courses for all new starters – she says it’s important for new staff to realise the importance of accessibility for all visitors. On top of this, there are courses on team-building and mystery shopping.

Mystery shoppers visit four times a month to test how staff react to different scenarios – for example, if a visitor tries to take a pushchair into the chocolate-making area, or wants to leave the exhibition halfway through to have lunch. All staff wear name badges and are given feedback on their performance.

It’s clearly working: “We scored 97.2% in our latest mystery shopping exercise,” says Debbie.