Satisfied Customers equal Successful Businesses

Monday 13^th  of July 2015

Excursion McCormick Place by Jost Hagedorn

Satisfied Customers equal Successful Businesses

Jessica Ken & me

After our Finance Course I was really looking forward to some activities and a day out. Our professor Valerie Beck joined the whole group and Rob and we took the bus to McCormick Place, which is the largest convention centre in North America. Arriving at the west building of the centre we were welcomed by Jessica William and Kenneth Schmidt. Jessica is the Infrastructure Service Manager and Ken the Technology Service Director of the convention centre.

They told us about their daily business and gave us a thorough insight into their working life. The costumers of the McCormick Place are national and international show managers and exhibitors with different requirements due to their exhibition spaces or conferences.

It was really interesting how important the Internet and Wi-Fi connection are for the customers. Thus, Jessica and Ken declared that the biggest challenges for their business are in fact IT operations. Other challenges mentioned are the education and expectation of customers that they have to manage. In some cases the customers cannot retrace the fees so they have to explain why fees increased in comparison to the year before.

We all agreed that the key to success is a satisfied customer. In addition to kindness, also knowing the needs of your costumers and solving problems quickly is very important to Jessica and Ken.

The McCormick Place can provide free Wi-Fi for every individual (max. 49,000 clients) in the building with standard Internet speed and special offers to paying clients with a higher speed (up to 24 Gig) depending on the customer’s needs. The biggest business fear of Jessica and Ken is that the Internet or Wi-Fi will go down at some point. But fear is a great motivator so hopefully this will never occur.

The four different buildings (north/east/south/west) are fitted with 870 access points and 250 switches. Ken explained that it is not easy to handle the huge amount of hardware, which is caused by technical innovation. They have to change the devices every couple of years. This increases the expenditures of the IT Department but it is necessary for them to stay in business. It is even a great logistical challenge for the employees. 

the construction sites

To enlarge the McCormick Place and the business, they started to build two new buildings. They will finish a 12,000-room hotel and a 10,000-seat arena in 2017. In the arena, the local women’s baseball team will play their home matches. So they can provide a better infrastructure to their customers.

During our tour it was very impressive to walk through McCormick Place, even if many of us know the big convention centres in Frankfurt and Hanover already, it is noteworthy how the McCormick Place handles the balance between being a classical convention centre and a modern work place for its 300 permanent employees and visitors. There is a roof garden on top of the building and a terrace with a breathtaking view over Lake Michigan. Satisfied employees are very important for McCormick Place.

Rooftop Garden

In conclusion, our excursion at McCormick Place gave us a good overview, as to how difficult it can be to manage the different needs of customers and how important it is to solve these problems to stay successful in this business. Overall, it was a nice experience that could even help us during our studies and the business plan for our start-ups.

Thanks to Jessica and Ken for having us.