Ever had the box office blues? asks Vanessa Bradley. The symptoms are many. They include watching staff sitting around with no incoming calls; the computer system crashing; customers complaining they can?t buy tickets online; a flood of calls stacking up on the answerphone; losing calls; and worst of all, the feeling that service, standards and sales are slipping away?
Today?s media-savvy customers demand rapid and easy access to information. They expect a quick transaction, and they expect efficient, friendly and knowledgeable customer service. The box office will often be the first point of direct contact those customers have with an organisation. But a paradigm shift is underway in how customers purchase tickets ? and cultural organisations can now utilise Internet solutions to cut costs and improve flexibility.
The Phone Room?s integrated telephone and Internet ticketing and information line service ties all this together to enable festivals, venues, museums and commercial promoters to outsource their entire telephone and Internet ticketing operation, add extra capacity, set up a short-term ticketing function and address a variety of other box office needs. It provides a clear alternative to ?traditional? ticketing agencies, which tend to charge high booking fees to consumers, and use their own distinct branding. Instead, ?pay as you use? services are branded to individual clients, and as well as a ticket-processing service, customer service teams deliver information, for example, about the venue?s facilities, programme and local transport. The service includes direct links from an organisation?s website to its own-branded online ticket ?kiosk?; dedicated telephone numbers; flexible pricing options (does the organisation wish to recoup costs through a booking fee?); extended opening times; and staffing to meet demand peaks.
Clients already using the service include The National Trust. With a series of summer music, theatre and comedy events across nine different venues ? none of them with existing ticketing operations ? and with event capacities ranging from 450 to 8,000, The National Trust?s South-East region required a fully integrated service. This included online purchasing accessible directly through its main website at http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk and a telephone box office ? including full telephone and online payment processing. A system was implemented, driven by ts.com?s web-based ticketing solution. The Phone Room fulfils and dispatches all tickets, whether purchased online, by phone or through cheques sent in the post.
Customer service, distinct branding and value for money were all high on the agenda for the Trust?s National Events Manager, Louise Orr, when she evaluated potential ticketing options. ?Due to the diverse nature of National Trust customers and the range of events that we run, it was extremely important to have phone operators who could communicate with our customers on the right level,? she said. ?The Phone Room staff were given detailed briefings of our events and tours of our properties so that they could not only sell tickets but answer most questions that are asked, and more importantly, in the right manner. Verbatim feedback from customers has shown that this is a huge improvement on the previous service.?
Vanessa Bradley is Managing Director of The Phone Room t: 0870 300 0560; e: info@phoneroom.co.uk