Optimising the Ticket Buying Journey, Part 4
In part four of our series on optimising the ticket buying journey, we focus on the delivery phase 鈥� ensuring your attendees have a seamless and positive on site experience when they arrive.
Action 4: Provide a great on site experience at the door
The most important customer experience of all is the one attendees have at your event. The best way to maintain the excitement and momentum of attendees from arrival is to optimise their experience from the moment they walk in the door. Long wait times and poor entry management is a common complaint at large events, but there are simple ways to ensure people get through the door quickly.
Tips for minimising entry times
Since it takes longer to do security checks than it does to scan tickets, perform bag and people scanning before ticket scanning. This ensures that there won鈥檛 be a backup between the two stations, and those who need extra attention by security personnel won鈥檛 hold up those who don鈥檛.
Break down the check-in process into many small jobs. If you require wearables (such as wristbands, lanyards, or hand stamps) separate ID distribution and scanning into adjacent stations. As it takes longer to apply a wristband than to scan a ticket, it鈥檚 best to have two dedicated wristband volunteers per ticket scanner to keep things moving.
Use advance sales and historical check-in data 鈥� built-in features of the 91制片厂 platform 鈥� to fine-tune your staffing needs according to programming highlights, day of the week, and time of day.
Use mobile to your advantage
With over 15 million Australian adults owning a smartphone, there鈥檚 a good chance that most, if not all, of your event attendees will turn up with their mobile device. This can not only help your event become virtually paperless, it鈥檚 also a fast and easy way to scan tickets and reduce congestion at entry.
Event Managers can keep track of attendee check-in progress using real-time reporting on the 91制片厂 Organiser app. This enables organisers to see how many people have checked in each hour, to give an idea of how many more are to arrive and best manage staff needs at the door. By viewing reports of individual devices, they can also monitor how many attendees door staff are processing, tackle bottlenecks, and add/reduce staff as needed.
This knowledge is useful for making decisions and adjustments on the fly, as well as creating better site maps for future events.
Introduce new RFID technology
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a small electronic device that can be inserted into an attendee wristband and act as a unique identifier for that wristband; providing unprecedented analytics and control over the flow of events. RFID wristband technology is already in use at some major music festivals and large public events to monitor foot traffic, save on the cost of gate staff, prevent ticket fraud, and even enhance attendee experiences with the inclusion of cashless payments and social media integration.
In the US, popular Californian New Year鈥檚 Eve event, SnowGlobe Music Festival, eliminated box office chaos, gate entry issues and fraud by implementing RFID wristband technology. Attendees received their RFID wristband prior to arriving at the festival along with information about how it could be used at the event, eliminating confusion and questions on entry. Arrival was also streamlined, as staff also didn鈥檛 need to be on hand to attach wristbands separately.
SnowGlobe CMO, Jeffrey Lesan, says 鈥淚t was such a tremendous relief for customer service. For the first time ever, we didn鈥檛 get any complaints about the box office. I usually anticipate spending the first night responding to every complaint coming through about the box office. But this year I didn鈥檛 have to deal with any complaints, which freed me to respond to other issues.鈥�
RFID technology is set to become more accessible to SME鈥檚 as early as next year, with the goal of Australian event-goers seeing its benefits during the 2017 festival season. You can .