8 questions to ask when selecting a platform to enhance the audience experience.

Start with your Requirements

Whether it be to deliver digital tickets, seamlessly manage pre-orders for F&B, programmes or merchandise, or even booking a pre-show dinner table, the variety of ways in which audiences are offered the chance to add more to their experience has grown significantly in recent times.

With a lot of general solutions and some very focused ones on the market it is key that you understand your requirements. What are you looking to achieve by working with an engagement platform?  What measurable outcomes such as a revenue growth figure over time, an increase in customer satisfaction scores, or a reduced wastage figure are you looking for? Do you want significant growth in the number records in your CRM? What customer experience and ways-of-working will help make those happen?

From knowing what customer experience you want to deliver and how you want to work within the venue you can derive the list of features you believe will achieve those things. Because you started out with measurable outcomes, you are already set-up for creating the business case too. You will have your own specific concerns, but hopefully our checklist below will aid you in developing your requirements and help you find the most suitable solution for your venue. 

1. Does it integrate with your ticket system?

Without integration to your ticketing software an engagement platform at worst just won't make sense, and at best will require a lot of re-keying of data. It won't make for a great pre-order experience either, because for each order the customer will be asked for information they expect the venue to know already! Your customers will assume that you know who they are, when they are coming to the venues and where they are seated, so having to re-enter this is inconvenient at best. At worst it is open to mistakes and frustration. 

The key benefit of ticket system integration is communication and timing. The platform should automatically connect with your guests at the optimal time, i.e. when they are most likely to make positive buying decisions. Some types of up-sell are very likely to convert during the original booking flow, but food and beverage campaigns are unlikely to be one of them. These are best done using the engagement platform at the optimal time, i.e a few hours before arrival time. Having recently purchased tickets to see one of my favourite musicals in three months time, I can honestly say I have no idea yet what I might want to order from the bar.

2. What is the approach to pre-ordering?

There are numerous options available to venues when it comes to taking pre-orders without the need for an engagement platform. These range from simple solutions that just email orders to the venues, to tickets cleverly designed to look like merchandise in the booking process, and even traditional order and pay apps that have been adapted from the take-away industry to suit the needs of arts and culture venues. With such a wide array of choices, it's important to consider how well these solutions serve your guests and what operational advantages they offer.

3. Does it integrate with your POS?

A significant feature of any engagement platform used to take pre-orders is the potential for it to integrate with your existing POS or till system. Being able to offer menus directly from your EPOS system and for it to send orders so that they appear on your kitchen screens and bar printers brings many operational advantages. 

Paul Gallagher at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, who use the Visit One platform, says that "fewer mistakes are made at the bar as a result of integration with the VisitOne audience engagement platform".

A pre-order solution that has an extensive list of existing integrations is more likely to integrate with your POS. One that has no integrations or very few, or even just one, may not have the flexibility to integrate with you quickly enough and may even charge for the privilege.

4. Can it capture shadow attendees?

Traditionally the majority of a venue's CRM contains details of bookers. But the booker is a small part of the attendee story. In fact, in some cases they are not even part of the story at all. They have simply purchased the tickets on behalf of someone. Yet your CRM will continue to market to them based on that booking. The holy grail of ticketing is to capture who actually attends. 

Some digital ticket distribution platforms do this, but if you are looking to combine the entire engagement experience into that, then you need to look carefully at what options are available. Does the platform you are considering provide the same engagement and upsell experience to everyone, including shadow attendees, or only the booker?

5. Is it secure?

Using a pre-show platform for issuing digital tickets as well as capturing pre-orders is the perfect opportunity to deliver a great customer experience. This means customers have their tickets to hand, and they can order drinks and merchandise on the way to the venue, all in the one place. But if unauthorised distribution or resale of tickets is a major concern then consider looking into how the pre-order platform does its part to protect your ticket distribution. Do you even want to include digital tickets in your pre-order offering for customers? Can the platform you are considering turn that feature off? Can it offer time delayed activation, perhaps at random, to deter the unauthorised sharing of tickets?

6. Is it an app and will it work off-line?

The thing about apps is they have to be installed from an app store. Some customers don't mind that, but for others it's a real pain because they often realise they need to install something at a very inconvenient time, at the last minute. That might be when there is no internet connection. Apps are not always so convenient or "sticky" for you as a venue or your customers. 

Installing a bespoke app can be a blocker to the up-sell revenue that you are trying to achieve. That said, for venues with very high volumes of repeat customers, an app might be just the ticket (pun intended). But if your customers are attending different venues throughout the year, how excited will they be to install yet another app that only works at your venue? Would it be better if your customers were sent a secure link that takes them right to the pre-arrival / pre-order engagement experience with no fuss and nothing to install?

If the no fuss option sounds attractive, you will want to check if the solutions you are considering will still work without an internet connection. Imagine the operational challenges with a queue of people trying to collect orders or enter the auditorium using your chosen solution, but everyone's screen is showing the wheel of doom. Awkward to say the least.

7. How flexible is it?

Every venue and attraction is different, and you will have your own unique approach to delighting guests and customers. How well do the platforms on offer cater for your unique set-up? What if you want to create specific offers for certain customers such as members, or only offer seat delivery to your boxes with its own special menu, or serve interval drinks in a different location than pre-show drinks? What about making a table reservation automatically for some types of order? 

The ability for an audience engagement platform to fit-in with you versus you having to fit-in with it will affect its ability to support you in creating your perfect customer experience.

8. What other opportunities does it offer?

Implementing a customer engagement platform means you have the chance to connect directly with your customers at a time when they are most likely to make positive buying decisions. For example to sign-up to your membership scheme, or to make a donation. It's like a direct line to each one. Or is it really to each one? Most audience engagement platform are connected only to the person who made the booking.

Connecting with attendees is a hot topic right now and is worth thinking about when looking at your pre-show partner options. Does the solution that you are considering enable the transfer of tickets, securely, from the booker to the people actually attending? Even it can, what benefit does that offer to you as a venue? The answer depends on what the solution can do thereafter. Can it, for example, collect the recipients details, allow them to do all the things the booker can do like ordering drinks and merchandise, and will it send those details back to your CRM or ticket system? If it can do that, you are on the way to collecting gold-dust. Being connected to each booker and attendee whilst they are at their most engaged has huge potential for delivering personalised and targeted campaigns. Being able to promote the next event in a series of related performances, or deliver a campaign to attendees who have been so many times in the last six months but are not yet members is very powerful. 

If your chosen solution can do that, and even track the click through, you are onto a winner.