Behavior changes
Josephine Chanter, Deputy Director of the Design Museum in London, clearly outlines the challenge for the cultural sector: “The battle for attention has fully erupted. Cultural organizations have to work incredibly hard to reach people and share the stories that matter to them.” Using data to gain more insight into this is something she fully embraces. “We want to respond to visitor behaviors so we can adapt.”
Movement patterns
To gain insight into how people move through the museum, they have visitors scan their tickets per exhibition or hall. Not to monitor the visitor, but to recognize patterns. Where does it get too crowded? Which gems are skipped? This gives insight into whether people only come for the popular Wes Anderson exhibition or visit multiple halls. But this revealed a significant obstacle: digital systems that don’t communicate with each other.
Systems that don’t ‘talk’ to each other
Josephine Chanter shares an honest insight: at the Design Museum, different datasets and ticketing systems initially couldn’t ‘talk’ to each other. A single ticket had a different identifier than a membership. It wasn’t possible to integrate these different types into the CRM. The result: to extract valuable insights from the data, a complete ticketing system had to be purchased, a significant investment.
But this was necessary, says Chanter: “If you don’t know what your visitors are doing in the building, you can’t retain them, so this is primary business information.”
Digital strategy + 6 KPIs
Data only gains meaning when it’s part of the broader vision and mission of the organization. During a strategy review, pillars emerged under which six KPIs were placed. “These are six data points that are most important to us and that we want everyone in the organization to focus on,” Chanter explains.
Key Performance Indicator:
The first concerns staff: we want to achieve an 80% score on employee satisfaction.
Key Performance Indicator:
Increase visitor numbers from 650,000 to 800,000.
Key Performance Indicator:
We want to resolve the deficit on the balance sheet.
Key Performance Indicator:
Visitors often rate their visit highly, but we want more people to recommend the museum to others; the NPS needs to go up.
Key Performance Indicator:
And finally, we want to achieve a 21% reduction in CO2 emissions.
Her most important advice: "Ensure the digital strategy doesn’t reside in one department but runs through the entire organization so everyone feels ownership."
Data as evidence
Not everyone immediately gets excited about the word 'data'. The solution to get people on board in your organization is simple according to Chanter: “shift the focus. Don’t present data as a cold table, but as an insight that directly helps a colleague. If a curator can see that a particular object is consistently skipped due to a wrong route, data suddenly becomes an ally in the creative process.”
Data then takes on the role of evidence rather than a starting point.
Are you curious about the episode of ‘Cultuurshift’ where Anic van Damme, Splinter Chabot, and innovation expert from the Rijksmuseum Evita Goettsch discuss this approach? In this video, you can see the whole podcast episode.
Podcast Cultuurshift Season 3
In the third season of the podcast ‘Cultuurshift’, we speak to a different international pioneer in the field of culture and technology in each episode. Think of innovations around gamification, AI, and data-driven work. How do they approach it, and what is the major added value for their audience and organization?
Host Anic van Damme and sidekick Splinter Chabot discuss this case with an expert from the sector and pose the question: what inspiration can we in the Netherlands draw from this innovative example?
Episode 3 is about how to gain control over visitors and audience flows using data.
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