Trends: Improving the Customer Experience, Drive to Digital & Utilising Data

Improving The Customer Experience

This is and continues to be a big one for businesses of all kinds, but is especially important in the arts, culture and entertainment industry, which has always been about the customer experience. Customers are buying an experience, and increasingly, organisations are looking at ways to improve the entire customer journey - from research to purchase to entry and exit.

While there may be some very obvious improvements that can be made for the big visible things that impact your patrons experience, such as improved online purchase experience, there are a lot of little things that can also improve patron journeys.

For example, some venues have experimented with free phone charging stations, or partnerships with local business all in an effort to improve the experience for customers. Some of our customers have focused on smoother entry using Ticketsolve mobile ticketing functionality. Others have taken advantage of our automatic email settings, which allow them to communicate with their customers before, after and even during their purchase journey.

Take a look at big and small areas that you can change to make a big impact on your customer experiences.

Drive to Digital

We (and everyone else frankly), has talked about digital - it simply cannot be ignored. From marketing to sales, digital has to be the focus. There are some areas you might consider when thinking about digital and your venue.

Venue specific apps

This is not necessarily just the domain of large mega venues. The ease and relative low cost of developing a venue specific app makes this a really great marketing and sales outlet for any venue. Ibeacons which we have discussed before, are another great opportunity that can be hooked into your venue specific app for an even more powerful marketing message. Another huge area is providing location specific information, which again can be done through a venue specific app.

Mobile ticketing

Mobile could probably be its own section to be fair. Whether you are looking mobile purchasing or mobile tickets, this is really where ticketing is heading. More and more people are using their mobiles to research, purchase and enter venues. Ticketsolve allows you to take advantage of mobile ticketing already, with optimised mobile sites, and simple secure mobile ticketing for venue entry.

Alerts and Custom Discounts

One huge advantage of going digital is data (we're going to cover that below). And with data is of course the ability to create automatic alerts and custom discounts for any customer segment you wish. Ticketsolve can help you take advantage of this great type of digital marketing with loads of options for automated alerts and discounts.

Concessions, merchandising and extras

Consider using your digital presence to promote and sell concessions, merchandise and extras right online. More and more venues are seeing an increase in sales for these extras, as they promote them online. Again if you are a Ticketsolve customer, you can set these up quickly and easily.

Digital marketing: Social and Growth Hacking

Digital marketing with its focus on social media is still king, and seems to show continued growth. Growth hacking takes advantage of digital marketing in new and creative ways. If you haven't had a chance to see our work with growth hacking - give us a bell, we'd love to explain!

Utilising Data

All this great work can only come from great data. Over the last number of years, everyone has been talking about data. But data for data's sake is completely pointless. Do you really understand what your data is telling you? How can you improve your tracking? How will you use that data effectively? How do you optimise your actions for the best results? None of this is simple by any means, but data still holds sway as long as we know exactly what we want to do with it.

As you can see none of these are mutually exclusive, all tying back into improving the experience for the customer - with a complete focus on digital and data.

Next week we'll take a dive into digital and see what concrete ideas you might be able to bring into your venue next year.