Gene Carr's Patron Technology Blog

You Don’t Need to be a “Genius” to Exceed Expectations

Today's blog post is by Nathan Anderson, the Client Success Manager here at Patron Technology.

If you asked my friends and coworkers the thing I’m best at, they would be right to say, “Spilling drinks.”

This past summer I dumped a thermos full of coffee on my eight month old MacBook Air (while I was using it). If you’ve ever spilled liquid on your technology, you know that it’s the equivalent of taking it for a swim with you. No amount of shaking, blow-drying, or toweling will save it.

I went to the Apple Store’s “Genius Bar” to confirm my suspicion that it was ruined. The Genius and I had a conversation:

Genius: What happened?

Me: I spilled an Olympic pool’s worth of coffee on my MacBook, and it won’t turn on. I’m going to assume it’s because of... you know... the coffee inside my computer.

Genius: Are you aware of our warranty policy?

Me: You mean how you don’t cover liquid damage? Yeah... yeah I’m aware of that part.

He took the machine, confirmed the great coffee disaster of 2011, and then the Genius (a title he earned that day) said this:

“We need to replace your logic board, clam-shell, RAM, battery...” (This went on for a while.) “The total repair cost is $800. We’re going to cover it this one time. If it happens again--it’s on you.”

Wow, right?

Apple does not do this for everyone. I know this because in 2008 the exact same thing happened to me (remember, I spill things), only that time I had to pay for it.

I have a four point theory about why Apple did this:

1. I purchased Apple Care. It doesn’t actually cover this kind of accidental damage, but buying it showed that I cared about my purchase.

2. My MacBook was not yet a year old. If it were three years old, I would probably be paying.

3. I didn’t lie. Do you think if I had incredulously said, “Hey, man, it just stopped turning on!?!” that Apple’s Genius would have been so generous? I suspect not.

4. Apple knows me. I’ve visited the Genius Bar before, and they have a record of every interaction we’ve had.

I expected Apple to fix my computer in exchange for money. Instead, they exceeded my expectations and increased the value of their brand by doing it for free. Here is the key reason they were able to do that:

They let their staff make educated decisions at the desk. 

The Genius was able to assess my history and allow the facts of our conversation to influence the resolution. By treating me like a human being and not like a faceless bag of potential money this employee made me even more nutty about Apple.

Do you allow your box office staff to make ticketing decisions at the kiosk? And do you realize that they are capable of having an invaluable conversation with your customers?

Here’s an example: Say you have patrons (who are in fact students) come to the ticket window without their student ID in hand. According to your policies, not having the ID would make them ineligible for a discount. What happens at your organization? Do you have to turn them away because technically they’re breaking your rules? Or, can the box office rep say this:

“Even though you don’t have your ID, I’m going to let you in at the discounted rate. I’m doing it because this performance is great and you should see it. And the only thing I’m going to ask is that if you like what you see, come back and bring back a friend with you. Sound like a deal?”

Think about all the places you interact with a customer, from phone calls to the front-of-house. Are these employees empowered to make these kinds of decisions? Can they bend the rules in the service of delighting someone?  

By now your patrons expect you to hand them a ticket and hear “enjoy the show!” They know you will help them find their seat. They assume you know (or want to know) their e-mail and phone number. Those are givens. What if you took the expected experience and improved upon it by knowing your customers. What if your service to them was informed by the fact that you knew their ticket-buying habits and their recent (or not recent - i.e., “Welcome back!”) experience with your organization?

This is a combination of data collection, technology, and internal process that, combined with empowering your employees, can transform your organization.

Better service equals better marketing. The next time I spill something on my technology (and I will) I can promise you that it will be made by Apple.

 

La Quinta Pared

La Quinta Pared is Spanish for "the fifth wall," and I'm pleased to say that Michelle Paul and I will be
breaking la quinta pared all over Spain next week. Here's our press release on the tour. 

Fundacion Autor a spanish book publishing company related to SGAE (Spain's' equivalent to ASCAP)  will be be publishing our Breaking the FIfth Wall: Rethinking Arts Marketing for the 21st Century in Spanish next week.  

In connection with the launch of the book, we're doing a four city seminar/book tour in Madrid, Valencia, Barcelona and BIlbao.  Each seminar is 6 hours (with a few breaks) and I suspect we'll be introducing many of the concepts that we're all familiar with here to arts marketing professionals in Spain for the first time.

As I wrote about a few weeks ago, the concept of marketing the arts isn't commonplace in Spain. However, art organizations are now looking toward marketing as a way to keep afloat in a slow economy. Because of the opportunities in funding for the arts, ticketing, and CRM, arts organizations need to immediately build relationships with their audiences in a way that they have never done before.  So I feel like we're on a mission even more than we are here in the USA to promote the concept of audience development using e-mail, social media, websites, and CRM.  

If you're in Spain, or know anyone that would like to attend, use this link for more info. 

 

Free Webtool Friday - OpenOffice.org

Though our office is about as "in the cloud" as we can make it, we still find that we use the traditional versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint on our office desktops from time to time. But did you know that there's a free alternative that is as good or better than the Microsoft Office Suite?  

It's at OpenOffice.org - and it's a complete software suite you download and use on your PC. It includes all the programs you'd expect for writing letters, doing spreadsheets, and presentations. I've used it, and I find that the OpenOffice version of Powerpoint ("Impress") superior to Powerpoint.

How this great software came into being is a long story, but it started out as StarOffice, which was then worked on my Sun Microsystems, and later Oracle. It's now a purely open-source project and over 500,000 people have contributed to building it over the years. You can download and use it right away and it's worth a test-drive.

Here's the fine print at OpenOffice.org:

OpenOffice.org 3 is free software. That means you are free to download it, free to install it on as many PCs as you like, free to pass copies to as many people as you like. You may use OpenOffice.org 3 for any purpose without restriction: private, educational, public administration, commercial... Free, really free. 

 

Ticketing: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

 Today’s blog post is by Steve Walsh, Account Executive here at Patron Technology. 

These days you can buy a ticket online to just about any event. In fact, the systems that make it possible to buy a ticket on the web vary just about as much as the entertainment options themselves. They can’t be that different, though, can they? As long as the patron can buy a ticket to the event without paying too much for the service, everything is fine...right? Not quite.

Growing up as an avid theatre fan and aspiring actor in Boston, I would eagerly await the arrival of Broadway’s latest musicals to play at the Colonial Theatre, The Wang Center, or The Shubert Theatre. I would save every cent of my precious birthday money and put aside every dime of my allowance in anticipation of that magical day when tickets would go on sale to the public. I would march right into the box office and painstakingly choose the best seats I could afford. I remember one time it took me over a half an hour to select my seats for Les Miserables. There was no option to buy a ticket online because...there was no Internet then. I could almost sense the box office representative thinking, “Wouldn’t it be nice if this kid could do this himself?” Thankfully for everyone involved, now I can!

Over the years the ticketing world has evolved tremendously. Whether you have a several thousand seat arena, a centuries old symphony, or a black box theatre company, there are technology companies waiting in line for your business. With so many to choose from, it can be easy to lose sight of what’s really important: making your patrons happy and saving your staff time.

I’ve been working in the ticketing industry for a few years now. My friends and family joke around saying that buying a ticket with me to an event is like going out to dinner with a chef. I’m very picky and I know what I like. Presentation and preparation are everything, and so often are the subtle nuances lost in translation.

The patrons’ experience starts well before they take their seats and the details make all the difference. As you consider which ticketing options are right for your organization, put yourself in the patron’s shoes. What do you look for in a great ticketing experience? So, wearing my hat as a “professional ticket buyer,” here are a couple of basic elements to keep in mind when considering new ticketing technology: 

Make It Fast

As a ticket buyer I am often required to create an account and enter a username and a password. This is one of my biggest pet peeves. I understand the desire to track my information and add me to your mailing list, but...do it on your own time -- not to mention that if I don’t remember my username and password, I’ll probably just create a new one.

Keeping a patron on your website long enough to complete the transaction should be your top priority. Try to keep log-ins for the members, for the people who don’t mind going through the extra steps because there is a benefit to them. While I’m looking forward to your event, I also have other things to do. An online ticket purchase should be as painless as possible. No matter how important your event is to a ticket buyer, it is nowhere nearly as important as getting dinner ready or getting the kids off to soccer practice!

Thank You, Come Again!

Often as arts patrons we are thanked personally for our contributions. But when buying a ticket, is a generic “Thank You” screen enough after a completed transaction? Actions speak louder than words. If patrons receive a “thank you” email after they buy their ticket, it registers. If they receive a reminder before the show, they are impressed. If you send them a message after the performance asking if they enjoyed it, or if you provide them with an invitation (or discount) to future productions you’ve proven to those patrons that you not only appreciate their business, but you appreciate them. In the end, individual attention is worth its weight in gold.

Speaking of emails, I’m always happy to know if an event I’m interested in is coming to town. On the other hand, I’m not terribly happy when I receive emails that have nothing to do with me. For example, if I bought tickets to see The Messiah, do I want to know when the Megadeth tour is coming to town? Keeping all correspondence relevant to a patron is not only a responsible marketing approach, but a respectful one.

Give Great Service

I’m a strong advocate of buying tickets online. It saves me time and makes life easier for everyone involved. However, I’m only human and am capable of making mistakes online. Whether I choose the wrong date or enter the wrong credit card number, these things can happen, and when they do I pick up the phone to get everything squared away. I like being able to talk to a human being who can quickly solve my problem and send me on my way. I guess I’m just old fashioned that way.

I know that for most arts organizations having someone on staff 24/7 to take calls like this just isn’t possible, and some organizations use a third party customer service and ticket fulfillment service. Using a third party call center isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it can be beyond frustrating when the person on the other end of the phone hasn’t even heard of the organization I just bought tickets from! So, if you use a third party now, test out this service. Call and pretend to be a patron. Were you happy with the service you received?

If every organization I attended did all of these things, I would probably run out of nights in the week very quickly!  I attend an arts organization’s event for the first time because of what that organization is presenting. However, whether or not I come back is based entirely on that first experience. For me, that’s everything.

Organizations that stay focused on providing the best overall customer experience shine through and will almost certainly turn a first time ticket buyer, like me, into a loyal patron.

 

Engineering "Amazing"

Closing in on my fourth hour of driving on my way to make a flight at Newark Airport to get to the National Arts Marketing Project conference in Louisville, Kentucky,  I began to sweat.   I hit some bad early afternoon traffic in New Jersey. The GPS showed that I would arrive at the Hertz rental return at  2:45 PM for my 4 PM flight--a little too close for comfort.

And then the Hertz “NeverLost” GPS had me take a right turn going right into downtown Newark.  I hit every red light known to man. Now my heart was pounding. I knew this had been a mistake, but I couldn’t turn around. And, I knew there were no more flights to Louisville that day and that if I missed the flight it would cost me hundreds in change fees and I’d have to pay for overnight hotel at the airport.

I finally pulled into Hertz rental return at 3:05 PM and I was clearly frustrated. Had it not been for the GPS, I would certainly have arrived at least 15 minutes earlier. As I opened the car door, the friendly Hertz agent said as he printed out my final bill, “How are you doing today?”  I muttered something like, “Not so good, you should really fix that GPS because it just took so far out of my way  that I’m likely to miss my flight.”

Here’s where the amazing part comes in.

Without missing a beat, the agent said, “I can see you’re in a rush, jump into the passenger seat, and I’ll drive you to the terminal." Less than 30 seconds later, I was being driven to the terminal, and was on time to check in.  I replayed this scene a few times in my mind and realized I’m a Hertz Gold customer and that the agent could clearly see that on my receipt. Now, how good do I feel about Hertz and keeping my Gold status right now?

At the NAMP conference yesterday morning, Scott Stratten (author of UnMarketing) gave an hysterical keynote all about creating “amazing.” He reminded us that you have no neutral brand interactions. Every contact with a customer either improves or diminishes your brand’s reputation. He posited that even if you mess up, the successful resolution of a customer service problem can do more good for your brand than if the problem had never happened in the first place. He offered his version of amazing - the story of a chef at a Hilton Hotel restaurant who went out of his way to apologize to him for a lousy breakfast.  

So is this something that can be institutionalized in the arts?  I think so.  How many amazing moments does your organization create at each event?  Is your culture (from the front office to the box office to the coat-check) designed so that your staff has the reflex to make amazing things happen?  How much better would your relationship with your patrons be if you did?

Fifth Wall Fridays: Know Your E-mail List

Twice a month I offer expansions on the themes and topics that Michelle Paul and I wrote about in our book, Breaking the Fifth Wall: Rethinking Arts Marketing for the 21st Century. If you like these, you can buy the book from us here, or on Amazon’s Kindle or Barnes & Nobles' Nook. 

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Do you know who is on your e-mail list?

How many of your e-mail subscribers are just an e-mail address, not even a first or last name?

And for the ones whose names you have, what exactly do you know about them? With a little bit of work and research, you can mine your data to segment your list in lots of useful ways. To get you started, here are some suggestions:

• By tenure: How long have your oldest e-mail subscribers been on your list, and what is the ratio to those that joined within the last six months? What is the average tenure of your list?
• By participation: How many are donors? Subscribers? Single ticket buyers? How many signed up when they were buying a ticket for the first time?
• By sign-up method: How many signed up in person, on your site, or when they were making a donation?

Finally, do you know what portion of your audience (or members) you even have an e-mail address for? And is that high enough?

Hopefully these questions will motivate your thinking about building your list and then targeting your e-mail marketing to some of these segments.

 

What Can You Learn from Corporate America's Chief Marketers?

I think it's a good idea for arts marketers to pay a lot of attention to what the chief marketing officers (CMOs) that run corporate America are thinking, as a way to benchmark their own thoughts.

I'm not saying that marketing the arts is the same as marketing Pepsi, but I think understanding what they are thinking can be a valuable data point.  That’s why last week's article about customer data in E-marketer was so interesting. 

The article focused on a study of CMOs worldwide, and this first graph tells a big story:

 

That social media is at the top is no surprise. But that their interest on analytics and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is nearly as high is a surprise.  Clearly the concept that your customer data is the raw material from which you should derive targeted marketing efforts is now paramount:

 In fact, 61% of CMOs said they used customer data for segmentation and targeting, highlighting the desire to better understand and message their current and potential clients.

The idea of centralizing your data and segmenting it continued in another graph that showed marketing priorities for 2011.  

 

And finally, CMOs are thinking about the adoption of new digital tools to enable them to do these things, and their over-riding concerns are all about what we would call the "patron experience," subscription renewals, and the reduction of churn. 

As you begin to think about your top priorities for the technology that you will use to run your organization in the future, I think the corporate market has got it right. We’re moving into a new era where technology isn’t about transactions anymore. "Can this system do X or Y?" is a given.

Rather, today technology is all about answering the question, "Can my system(s) help me target my customers better, improve my service to them, and consequently make them more loyal?"

 

 

 

Analyze Your Website!

For many years I've advocated in seminars and in my books that your website should be a "machine for marketing."  The inputs are people's time and attention and the outputs should be a quantifiable end result that you determine. Then you go build your site to achieve that goal. For instance, I'm generally in favor of sites that make e-mail sign-ups their primary goal.

Today I refer you to Seth Godin's terrific blog post titled "Six Questions for Analyzing a Website."  You'll have to take a leap from his decidedly for-profit appraoch, but I think the message is both clear and consistent with my thinking.

And, relating back to our recent post about using the data you already have to make better decisions, your website's traffic metrics are a perfect place to start. 

Free Webtool Friday - Instapaper.com

Often times I happen upon an article or two online that deserves more than a 10 second look, and I vow I'll read it later. Now comes the hard part:  how to organize and remember those articles so I can actually read them later? I used to cut and paste the article URLs and send them to myself an email, which cluttered up my inbox even more. Then I found www.instapaper.com which solves this problem simply and elegantly. 

With Instapaper, you sign up for a free account which provides a "read later" button that you place on your browser.  Then you simply click the "read later" button when you're looking at an article you want to recall, and instantly, that link is saved to your personal Instapaper account. 

You then log-on to Instapaper at  your convenience and read the article later.  All your saved articles are in one place, organized in date order for easy reference. There are other  features that allow you to  share articles you “like” on other accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Evernote.

Can Fantasy Baseball Help You Run Your Organization?

 

Today’s blog post is by Nathan Anderson, the Client Success Manager here at Patron Technology.

I play fantasy baseball.

If you’re not familiar with fantasy sports, here’s the most typical way to play: You join a league with other players, and each participant gets to select a “team” from the entire professional player pool through a draft system.  When the real season starts, you play against one other team in your league on a weekly basis. In order to win, you must have a collection of players that compile better real-life stats than the team you’re playing.  It’s-- well, it’s supremely dorky, but hopefully you get the idea.

This year I was more prepared for my season than ever before. I had spreadsheets containing all of last year’s data and trends. I used a color coding system (it required a legend) to tell me the rankings of 250 baseball players, broken down by position and skill set. I went through three mock drafts to simulate what I thought others would do based on aggregate rankings from popular fantasy baseball websites. Most of the people I play with just parrot those rankings, and should someone else choose the player they want in the middle of their draft they go by “gut feel” to pick another.

That wasn’t me. I had my data to rely on. I was going to win the league.

That was in April. But by the time September came around, not only did I not win my league I didn’t even make the playoffs. I had a 60 percent chance of doing so in April and yet... what happened?

In those super-confident moments following my draft I forgot one thing: sports are played by human beings.

If a sports nerd put 100 hours of research into dissecting the Super Bowl, they could still pick the wrong team, while my mother could potentially pick the winner with this infallible logic: “The Steelers? … They sound dangerous -- I don’t like stealing.  I’ll take the Packers.”

Sports Nerd: 0
My Mom: 1

If I isolate this result, it looks like I wasted my time doing homework, but the truth is I would do it all the same way again. Why?  Because it’s all about next year.

Sure, I could tell you about all of the injuries, the statistical anomalies, and all of the other breaks that didn’t go my way, but doing so would mask this point: I can actually tell you all of those things. Those “things” are explanations, and they are all good data that I can take into next year’s draft.

If the guy who won the league this year doesn’t use the information he garnered throughout the season, he’s not going to have an advantage going into next year. Maybe he’ll get lucky again, but he shouldn't take that chance. You might be saying, “But if I do all this work and I still fail, didn’t I have crummy data? Shouldn’t I just trust my gut and my intellect?”

No.

I’ve been playing fantasy baseball for six years. I’ve won or placed in the top three of my leagues more often than I have not. I attribute this success to data devotion.

I also work with arts organizations every day, and it’s now obvious to me that data awareness has to become a priority. Keep track of every decision you make. If you have a CRM system, use it. Take note of every outcome, good or bad. Investigate and notice why people renew or don’t renew and why they complain (about everything from the seat cushions to the hand soap in the restroom), and track their reasons. If you selected a designer for your season brochure that you thought was perfect for the job, but working with them proved difficult or the end result was not what you wanted, pinpoint the reasons why and move on to the next choice you have to make.

If you do this consistently you’ll begin to discover patterns, and then, eventually, you’ll make winning decisions more often than not. Resist the temptation to reject collecting or using data because it takes work or because sometimes your “gut calls” are actually right.

The great thing about data is it’s never wrong. It’s information. It just is. Get as much of it as you can: formulate your opinions, and trust that you’re more prepared to make smart choices because of it.

You’re not going to win every decision you make (My Mom: 1, Sports Nerd: 0), but if you become more data driven, you will win the decision-making process 100 percent of the time.