Congratulations to Wheatland Express! Their summer is off to a great start. Their events and tours are so popular that they are scheduling more.

But don't think they found the fast track to success. It took a lot of hard work. That included knowing early on how important staff training and development would be in launching a first class service.

Joan Wassill, who was director of sales and marketing for Wheatland Express during its crucial start-up phase, contacted Tourism Saskatchewan’s Product Development team last fall.

Joan was looking for information that would help the excursion and event passenger train start-up get a thorough understanding of tourism markets in Saskatchewan.

"They (Product Development) were a wealth of informati"on," Joan says. "They were very supportive of our project."

Product Development introduced Joan to Kari Burgess, Account Representative at Tourism Saskatchewan.

"They made it their priority to get their people trained before they opened," Kari says, recalling her first meeting with Joan and another Wheatland Express representative.

"It was important for them to make sure that staff would make a good first impression," she says. "The best way for them to do that was to make sure that everybody was on the same page and knew Joan's expectations for customer service."

"Joan was very committed to staff development – making an investment in people so that they would return year after year."

Wheatland Express made sure that staff providing food and beverage service completed Serve it Right Saskatchewan (SIRS) early. In addition, excursion guides and event staff completed Service Best online.

"I had very strong feelings about what we wanted our guest services to look like and I didn’t want to reinvent curriculum that's already written," Joan says.

"Kari was fabulous," Joan adds. "She found the time to meet with me and answered my questions very knowledgeably."

Joan was already familiar with Service Best, having completed the training previously. She knew what staff would learn taking the course, but also made sure that everyone would be able to adapt the course content to situations they might encounter on the job.

They conducted an internal workshop with staff. Staff practiced Service Best concepts among themselves before their first event with real customers.

"It was in the conversations in that workshop that we were able to tweak the information in the course and apply it to our own work," Joan says. "That’s where I felt that Service Best was a great course."

Wheatland Express is running excursions and events through October 06.

Read more in the Summer 2018 issue of Going Places about how Tourism Saskatchewan worked with Wheatland Express.

Photo by Scott Prokop, Scott Prokop Photography