Hi all,
As part of our mission to better assist people with access requirements to attend the museum, festivals and events, we have detailed information online including physical and sensory considerations. People are also welcome to contact our booking and enquiries (ticketing) team to ask more detailed questions and organise specific provisions (e.g. using the viewing platform or wheelchair seating area; letting us know they need an alternate entrance so we can look out for them; needing transport from the car park to the entrance; booking a tactile experience).
We’re more than happy to provide this information and service about our venues and events, and have had many folks feel confident and comfortable to come along to our events and festivals because of the information and support we’re able to provide.
However, team members have reported that these conversations often include a lot of personal detail, including stories of trauma, that patrons feel the need to share as a justification for their requests. It can thus be hard to sift through the information to clarify what someone actually needs from us, and listening to stories of trauma, discrimination and injustice can be upsetting.
While remaining conscious of our own privileges and compassionate to people’s lived experiences, I’m interested to know if anyone has strategies to help customer service teams to steer the conversation to the information they need to serve someone’s accessibility requirements, while ensuring someone that they don’t need to justify these provisions and potentially relive their own trauma to secure them?
Any insights would be sincerely appreciated!
Warmest regards,
Olivia
Hi Olivia,I completely understand how hard navigating these conversations with customers can be. It is something we're discussing regularly as well. One form of training that we have found to be effective, is adjusting training materials about dismantling microaggressions to be more specific to customer service. While the information sharing isn't necessarily intended to be harmful, the framework for interrupting those moments translates well and has also helped us when discussing both intentionally harmful discussions with customers, but ALSO unintentionally harmful discussions. Microaggressions were our starting point simply because they are often the acts that many are most unaware they are perpetuating. There are a lot of resources on this topic that I don't necessarily recommend one over the other. We made materials based on a combination of them, and adjusted language to best fit our team and objective.