Organizations that build great relationships with their audiences know that their box office software does far more than just sell tickets.
Beyond being the first step in a customer journey, ticketing technology can:
Increase overall spend on tickets, subscriptions, food & beverage and more
Boost donations and promote memberships or subscriptions
Help departments work together and understand overall customer behavior
Encourage everyone in your organization to measure impact and make decisions based on accurate audience data
What do you need from your system?
What opportunities exist for improvement, and what specific challenges do you need to overcome?
Writing a simple list of functions or features that you want is tempting, but it’s not a useful tool for evaluating potential systems. You’re more likely to get a rounded view of how a potential supplier can meet your requirements if you ask them how they'll address your business goals, not whether they have a specific feature.
So, while you might have a short list of ‘must have’ features that are essential, you should also consider requirements that are goal oriented and focused on the needs of your audiences and events. This is a much more effective way to evaluate the suitability, skill and performance of a new supplier.
What's possible with a modern software solution?
Carry out some simple research to arm yourself with the latest information about the systems on the market, and what they could help you achieve; or join us for our upcoming Spektrix introductory webinar to see what we can offer or arrange a no-obligation introductory call with our sales team.
Speak to your peers
Identify organizations with similar audiences, programs or priorities to yours. Pick up the phone and ask how their systems work for them: what they value, and what could be improved.
Meet vendors and their customers through conferences and networks
Throughout the year, there are great events and opportunities to meet potential suppliers and hear directly from their patrons. Start with:
Questions for software suppliers
Use these examples to frame your conversation and effectively evaluate which solution will best boost your box office
Internal challenge/problem | What you need from a new system | Challenge expressed as a question to potential suppliers |
---|---|---|
We’re not making enough money on add-on options when customers book tickets. |
Tools that put add-on options in front of the patron and encourage them to buy when making a booking. |
“Please demonstrate how your product can help us to drive additional purchases on advance sales, and provide examples of existing users who are successfully doing this that we can look at.” |
Our fundraising database is separate to the ticketing system and we don’t really know what donors book for without manual work. |
Ideally, a single system that means fundraisers can easily research what events existing and potential donors are booking tickets for. |
“Demonstrate how your system provides a single overview of how existing and potential donors interact with our organization and how this can be used to drive revenue.” |
We have to pay a chunk of money every 18 months to upgrade the system or we lose support for it. There’s often a day or so of downtime. |
Upgrades should not be so expensive and we don’t want the hassle of implementing them. We’re a venue, not an IT business. |
“Describe how you maintain your users’ systems and apply upgrades on their behalf. Please explain if there are costs for these and if so, why?" |