With the right ticketing box office software, you’ll be ready to meet demand and maintain great customer service, even in periods of peak sales.
Every box office team is familiar with the stories of ticketing gone wrong - customers stuck in queues, losing their place at the point of transaction, or struggling with priority access codes. Too often, as demand for tickets rises, the quality of customer service falls.
There’s a common factor in these box office horror stories. If your ticketing software’s clunky or outdated, it’s unlikely to keep pace with online demand. If it looks slick on the surface, it may not have the robust foundations needed to handle pressure. If you rely on external providers, you’re putting your reputation and customer relationships into the hands of companies whose public profile is viewed ambivalently, at best.
With Spektrix, it’s possible to sell tickets at up to 10x the speed of similar systems - and to maintain a great customer experience along the way. With full control of your customer data, you can personalize the journey with upsells, pre-visit information, and follow up communications - turning your biggest events from box office headaches into seamless introductions to your program.
The biggest events in your season can make or break customers’ experience. Yet the irony for box office teams is that the smoother the onsale, the less attention they receive.
When it goes well, customers barely notice the ticket-buying experience. They’ve got tickets in their hands, they’ve added the most sought-after merchandise, they’ve received an email telling them where to be and when. Everything feels easy, and they’re focused on the big show!
When it goes badly, on the other hand, everyone seems to know about it - from executive suite to social media, the conversation can quickly turn negative. That’s unpleasant for box office ticketing teams, especially when there’s little to be done about it in the moment - a surge in incoming ticket requests can quickly overwhelm outdated or flimsy ticketing systems, leading to long queues, frustrated customers, and potential revenue loss. For teams juggling all the pressures of pricing tiers, seating preferences, promotional offers, and presales, even the best laid plans can go quickly awry if your box office software and purchase pathway simply aren’t up to the task.
And the impact on your reputation shouldn’t be underestimated - loyal attendees are left feeling like venues or promoters don’t care, while newer customers can form a snap judgement based on a single negative interaction.
Every year, as the Spektrix client base grows, we test the onsale capacity of our system a little bit further. And we haven’t found our limit yet! In an approach that’s unique within the arts sector, our servers draw on the infinite, adaptable capacity of Microsoft Azure’s elastic pools - allowing us to scale our usage based on demand and make downtime a thing of the past.
“Spektrix has revolutionized our approach to ticketing, memberships, and donations. We've noticed a significant decrease in complaints regarding the online purchasing process compared to our previous system and we no longer worry about system crashes during onsales. With Spektrix, we've elevated our game, transforming challenges into triumphs, complaints into compliments, and revenue streams into rivers of success. It's simply outstanding.” Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Saratoga Springs, NY
Customers’ expectations seem simple - they want to get hold of tickets, fast, at a price they’re able to pay. But as every box office manager knows, it’s not quite that easy. Ask someone about a good ticketing experience, and they won’t have much to say. Ask them about a bad one, and prepare yourself for the tirade.
The goals of the box office team may not be all that different from those of your customers. With the right technology, onsale day should be exciting - a moment to enjoy the buzz that surrounds your program, and to see revenue pouring in.
With the right ticketing technology in place to do the heavy lifting, you’ll be free to focus on customer experience, with creative campaigns and human touchpoints by phone and at the box office counter.
The success or failure of your big onsales depends, above all, on the capability of your ticketing platform. Many arts organizations still rely on technology partners offering a traditional approach to cloud-based software - ring-fenced capacity, still managed by their onsite team. A few may even rely on old-fashioned onsite servers, running from a closet in the box office - placing all the effort of maintenance and uptime on you and your team.
With Spektrix, you benefit from a platform that’s designed to offer reliability, scale, and the most current updates to every user - without any risk, cost, or downtime. In 2020, we undertook a transformative move to host the system using a platform as a service (PaaS) approach. Rather than maintaining our own servers, Spektrix now runs from Microsoft’s serverless Azure database. Azure’s infinite capacity allows us to scale up and down our usage in seconds, giving us all the computing power we need when things get busy, without paying for it when it’s not required. That approach is unique in the world of arts ticketing software, and it’s a solution that benefits everyone: from our users, to their audiences, and to the planet.
If your ticketing technology’s struggling to handle capacity, or creating a negative onsale experience for teams and patrons, it may be time to consider a change. Here are a few questions to ask when you’re assessing current or potential providers.
Reach out to our client success team for guidance on upcoming onsales or improved purchase pathways.
Ask us for a demo or informal conversation to understand more about our platform, servers, and technology, and how we've helped hundreds of organisations like yours to achieve more.