Samenvatting

The Openluchtmuseum in Arnhem has been around for a hundred years sharing experience and promoting the cultural heritage of the Netherlands. The museum has primarily been sharing and promoting only with the Dutch market but has now grown enough in visitor numbers and revenue to focus on a new customer segment: German Visitors. Before starting to market to German vistors the Museum is interested in the current customer experience of German visitors in order to know how to improve their product for this new target market. Or in other words “ How can the Openluchtmuseum improve the customer experience of German Visi tors ? ” In order to find out what needs improvement, in depth research was done into the current customer experience of German visitors by using research techniques such as observation and shadowing. Seven German families with children between the ages of 4 and 12 were invited to visit the museum while being shadowed by the researcher. Field notes where written and later used to find the pain points within the customer journey and to draw up a customer journey map as well as create personas of a typical German Family. This information then answered the research question “ What touchpoints need to be changed in order to improve the customer e xperience of German visitors? “. It was found that there are three main pain points within the museum. The orientation both with the map and the pathways signs often brought annoyance and frustration to the visitors. The German visitors also felt like they were missing out on the interaction available in the park due to language barriers. Finally, lack of information pertaining to break times of craft personnel and presentation timings caused disappointment to be felt by the families. Three solutions were chosen to solve each of the three pain point areas; an application for orientation and information, the encouragement of German visitors to approach staff members while speaking German, and the addition of signs with information of presentations and break times for the crafts. An implementation plan as well as financial implications can be found in chapter 3 of this report.