The zoo and botanical gardens applies analytics to affect every aspect of the visitors’ experience.
Delivering an optimal customer experience is no day at the zoo—unless it’s the customer experience at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens. The venue intends to become an innovator among local, and even national, attractions by integrating and analyzing data to deliver better customer experiences. By leveraging analytics, the Ohio-based zoo is overhauling its customer experience across every touchpoint, from the moment visitors walk through the gates to its beer huts and gift shops to its promotions and offers. It’s even using analytics to make decisions that affect other aspects of the business, such as streamlining inventory and controlling advertising spend.
The organization may seem forward-thinking in its approach to analytics, but according to John Lucas, director of park operations for the zoo, until recently no one at the zoo had ever heard of leveraging analytics to affect the customer experience; analytics was solely for use in accounting. “We didn’t know what business analytics was,” Lucas says. “As a result, we were looking at our business from a physical architecture standpoint.”
Management wanted to maximize attendance of its more than 1.2 million yearly visitors and raise visitor spending. However, the lack of a 360-degree view into customer spending and behavior while at the zoo prevented management from reaching this goal. In fact, to get a sense of visitor satisfaction and spending, management had to walk the park, which diminished the effectiveness of the staff.
Additionally, the zoo used three separate systems to capture and collect sales and admission data: one for ticketing, one for retail, and one for food and beverage. The lack of integration prevented management from placing ordering based on items most frequently purchased, analyzing spending patterns, or drawing a correlation between guest behavior and fluctuations in attendance.
Management also lacked insight as to which products and services to feature in promotions and to display and was unable to track overall sales performance and cross-promote products. As a result, it took the staff about two weeks to determine the most popular products at concession stands and gift shops each month.
According to Lucas, the zoo wanted to conduct a range of projects, like recognize its loyal customers when they enter the zoo and identify them by name, introduce new ways to incite visitors to buy, market loyalty programs to non-members, and identify frequent visitors.
As a result executives started taking a more critical look at what was driving the customer experience—the best way to structure it, the level of detail involved in integrating it, and the possible business outcomes that spur sales. “We also looked at what we can do to drive visitation, loyalty, and money,” Lucas says.
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