Visitor Experience Manager - Bath, Somerset, United Kingdom - Bath Abbey

Description

Job Description

Job Title: Visitor Experience Manager

Reports to: Head of Visitor Experience

Responsible for: Visitor Experience Officers, Visitor Experience Assistants, Visitor Experience Volunteers

Salary: £29,000 per annum

Employment: Permanent full-time contract

Hours: 40 per week including regular weekends and bank holidays and occasional evenings

Annual Leave: 25 days + bank holidays

Overall purpose of the role

Bath Abbey welcomes over 300,000 visitors a year. This role is responsible for delivering day to day visitor operations and ensuring a high-quality visitor experience. You will contribute to the financial stability of Bath Abbey by maximising income generation through admissions, guided tours and appropriate add on items.

You will create a positive, professional and productive work environment for your team of staff and volunteers leading by example and supporting their learning and professional development.

Who we're looking for

We're looking for a highly organised manager with a proven track record in visitor operations and visitor experience; someone who adopts a "visitor first" approach and is a calm and supportive leader on the ground; someone with vision and imagination who will bring best practice and innovation to help us deliver on our aspirations and vision.

Job Description

The scope of the job is to:

• Ensure staff and volunteers provide a consistent high-quality visitor experience; from initial welcome to guided tours and public engagement opportunities to saying goodbye.
• Set, monitor and review quality standards in relation to customer service and delivery of tours.
• Regularly evaluate and improve the quality of the visitor experience taking into consideration visitor feedback.
• Regularly report on the financial performance of the team.

Key Responsibilities

• Ensure all visitors receive a warm welcome to Bath Abbey.
• Ensure all staff and volunteers in your team have a strong knowledge of the visitor offer and are able to communicate this to our visitors.
• Work with the Facilities Manager to ensure all public areas are presented and maintained to a consistently high standard.
• Work with the Facilities Manager to review, implement and monitor all aspects of health and safety, first aid, security, risk assessments and emergency procedures relating to visitor operations.
• Monitor and respond to visitor feedback (including TripAdvisor) in a professional and timely manner.
• Ensure all Visitor Experience staff and volunteers are appropriately recruited, inducted, trained and developed.
• Line manage, coach and develop a team of Visitor Experience Officers, Visitor Experience Assistants and volunteers.
• Set, monitor and review quality standards for your team and coach them accordingly.
• Act as a role model to ensure consistently high levels of customer service are delivered.
• Ensure appropriate levels of staffing and volunteer support for the Abbey to operate as a visitor attraction. This includes the production of monthly and daily rota's.
• Lead regular briefings and meetings for visitor experience staff and volunteers.
• Support the operational delivery of exhibitions.
• Contribute to the development of, and lead when appropriate visitor focused events.
• Oversee the Abbey's Tours Programme, delivering tours as required.
• Oversee the Abbey's visitor accessibility work.
• Oversee the Visitor Experience volunteer journey and experience.
• Work with external organisations to increase ticket sales.
• Work with the Communications Officer to ensure all printed materials for visitors are produced in an engaging, accurate and timely manner.
• Work with the Learning Manager to ensure the smooth running of learning activities and school visits on the Abbey floor.
• Work with the Retail Manager to maximise sales of appropriate products at the Abbey's visitor entrance.
• Support the Head of Visitor Experience in the production of reports and visitor evaluation.
• Achieve the delivery of the Visitor Experience Team budget.

Person Specification

Essential

• Relevant qualification in history, heritage, hospitality, tourism or similar or able to demonstrate equivalent interest, knowledge and experience.
• Relevant first aid qualification or willingness to undergo training.
  
• An understanding of visitor operations or visitor experience in a heritage attraction.
• An understanding of different access requirements and how to meet visitors needs.
• A flexible, visitor first approach.
• Clear and effective written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to manage a busy workload, multitask and prioritise accordingly without compromising on quality.
• Ability to work both collaboratively and independently.
• Ability to make decisions under pressure without immediate assistance from line manager.
• Excellent forward planning skills.
• Excellent IT skills.
• A minimum of 5 years experience in visitor operations, visitor experience or customer service, ideally in a heritage attraction.
• A minimum of 2 years line management experience, ideally in a heritage attraction.
• Recruiting and managing volunteers.
• Cash handling / till reconciliation.
• Working with back-office ticketing and online booking systems.
• Dealing with visitor complaints and handling demanding and difficult situations with the public, in a calm and confident manner.

Desirable

• An understanding of the history of Bath Abbey including religious aspects of British history and Bath Abbey's links with the British Empire; or a willingness to undergo research and training in these areas.
• An understanding of volunteering policy and framework.
• A creative and imaginative approach to problem solving.
• Growing and developing public tours.
• Successfully implementing change.
• Using volunteer management software.

Special Requirements

• Hours are on a four-week rotation and include regular weekends and bank holidays and occasional evenings
• The successful candidate will be required to submit to an enhanced DBS clearance check

Application

To submit an application, please send a full CV and covering letter of no more than one A4 page which explains why you are a suitable candidate. Please include the details of two references. References will only be taken up once an offer has been made.

Please send your CV and letter to Sarah Fielding, Head of Visitor Experience at and Natalie Cox-Mullings, Human Resources Officer at ncox-

Deadline for applications: Friday 12 April 2024

Please note: Due to the high volume of applications we receive, we regret that we are unable to respond to every applicant. If you have not heard from us by Friday 26 April 2024 please assume you have not been successful on this occasion.

Bath Abbey

Bath Abbey is a flourishing parish church in the heart of the UNESCO World Heritage City of Bath and a significant part of the city's rich heritage which reaches back to Roman times. Please visit our website for further information.

While the geographical parish has only a small residential population, our congregation is a gathered community from all over the city and surrounding area. We also welcome over 500,000 regional, national and international visitors and worshippers each year. Bath Abbey has around 25 staff, around 50 choir members, over 200 volunteers and over 450 people in its congregation.

Bath Abbey was built in 1499, is Grade 1 Listed and is the last great medieval church to be built in England. In addition to this building, the staff of Bath Abbey work from offices in Kingston Buildings next door, which is also home to the Abbey's Song School.

Our Values, including Equality, Diversity & Inclusion

Bath Abbey's core values are as follows:

Welcoming - we open our hearts minds and doors to all people, and we offer a warm and inclusive welcome to everyone who visits or connects in any way with the Abbey.

Sharing - we value teamwork and knowledge sharing. We listen to the views of others and are transparent, collaborative and responsible in how we deliver our roles.

Cherishing - we care for all people, our planet and the culture and heritage of the Abbey. We show this in the way we make people feel, the empathy and support we offer, responding to cultural shifts and challenges, and altering our behaviours to live more sustainably. Not all of us can do the same things but what we uniquely do, we can do with great love.

Flourishing - we encourage people to grow and so look to create a working environment that provides opportunities to learn, innovate and develop, so that we can be happy, fulfilled and successful in our roles.

Bath Abbey is committed to treating our staff and our whole community with dignity and respect. We aim to represent diverse identities within our staff and our whole community whether this be by race, culture, religion, sexual orientation, gender, disability, or social background. We work to ensure that staff fulfil their potential within a proactive caring and loving environment. We aim to be a diverse and truly representative workplace and particularly welcome applications from people of UK Minority Ethnic/Global Majority Heritage.