Let’s say you have twelve delicious donuts in a box.

You bring them into a classroom of first-grade kids, frothing with glee after recess. You put the donuts on a table. Cake donuts. Glazed donuts. Different flavors. They smell good. They’re even still a bit warm.

You say, “Who wants a donut?”

What happens? All thirty kids come rushing to the table and start grabbing donuts in a fierce dustup of flying sugar, elbow jabs and colorful uses of the word “booger.’ 

The lucky kids nearest the box get one but then get crushed by the throngs pushing in. The less lucky kids on the periphery are sad they didn’t get a donut and by the time they even got a glimpse of the box, it was empty. Crumbs. Not fair! There weren’t enough! Disappointment sets in.

And truthfully? It wasn’t a great experience for anyone. Even the kids who got a donut had to scarf it down in a half-chewed Darwinist gulp before they could properly savor it.

Now imagine those donuts are a limited availability run of Kusama or Hamilton tickets and that is you in the dustup. As a patron, is that really the customer experience you want to have? A wild, bloodlusty landrace for… museum tickets? As a venue, is that the customer experience you want your patrons to have?  Sure, the hype is good but wouldn’t it be better to get tickets into the hands of your patrons with as little drama and inconvenience as possible?

Managing large ticketing on-sales is the very face of the tired old man, Supply And Demand (whose initials are, not coincidentally, S.A.D).  But it doesn’t have to be that way. Venues have the ability to tip the balance in favor of the patron in how they design for digital customer experience.

___ 

In this article for Capacity Interactive’s Ideas blog, Kristin Darrow, Senior Vice President, Digital, offers some advice for managing a large ticket on-sale where demand outstrips supply, while advocating for good customer experience throughout.

Read the full article >

Planning a Large Onsale? This Tessitura Product blog article provides tips to prepare for your big day. 

Eight Keys to Record-Setting On-sales (login required)>

Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday are two of the biggest digital commerce days for many organizations. See our recommendations. 

Countdown to Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday (login required)>