How were our finalists selected?
Great question! We had a lot of fun in the process!
The selection involved two phases:
1) Celebration! Cinema employees spent months (most of the summer) engaged in what we called the "tagging project." Each employee was encouraged to recognize occasions in which they felt that they had received “celebrated service” from another business in the community. They were welcomed to express appreciation to the person providing the service by giving them a free movie pass with a thank you note. To get a new pass (for further use), our staff were asked to share experiences and stories on the celebratedservice.com website.
2) In October, each Celebration! Cinema employee (approximately 500 total) was asked to nominate one business that they felt consistently demonstrated Celebrated Service. The finalists were selected from the group of nominees in an open process by all of our employees based on the quantity of nominations combined with the quality of stories told.
Our finalists are not a definitive list of the only great service in West and Central Michigan, and the list is impacted by the demographic of our employees. However, business nominations were based on real experiences (and multiple experiences) that inspired our staff to think more creatively about what they experience, why they appreciated it, and how that 'feeling' might translate in what they personally can aspire to provide.
In our business, we don’t get it 'right' all of the time, but we’ve found that telling the positive stories has been moving us in the right direction. We hope that you will enjoy voting and sharing your own stories, and we look forward to checking out and learning from new businesses in the future!