Dear Readers,
Currently I am contracted with the Colorado Music Festival and am working on getting planning up-to-speed, which is why I have been so quiet this past week.
One topic I have been thinking about on the side is customer service and the ticketing process. I hear so many horror stories about how awful the experience was for people to buy their tickets to arts events. This could especially be a problem if your tickets are handled by an outside or community box office. When you do not have control over your ticketing, it could cause further problems down the road, such as lost audience members.
It is important to evaluate your ticketing process to make sure it is a smooth process from finding the buy tickets link to the end of the order and beyond. If you have not done so already, ask a few volunteer audience members to go through both the online and the phone process and give you feedback. Ticketing is definitely one of those areas where the organization/artist might think they have a user friendly system, but may not until someone goes through the entire system.
Having follow up information is crucial these days, and can be set up automatically. There is no excuse to not have an email that goes out after the purchase to give them helpful hints for parking, transportation, etc., to make their lives easier and the full experience as pain free as possible. Also, sending out a final follow up to thank them for attending and to invite them to another show they would enjoy, at this point in time, should be a no brainer.
Take the time to evaluate your ticketing process. It will increase not only sales, but the happiness and loyalty of your audiences!
Cheers to happy and loyal audiences,
Shoshana
Shoshana Fanizza
Chief Audience Builder, ADS
Audience Development Books to learn how to build audiences are here!
