create balance

it still all starts with a ticket

DMT sales and ticketing

the background

When you’re responsible for handling thousands of ticket sales over the phone or at numerous busy box offices, you must be sure of a few things.

A set-up that allows you to sell tickets effectively, processes that support sales as demand for different shows rises and falls, but most importantly a team of people who have the knowledge, expertise, and experience to deliver at the expected 5-star standard.

The Sales and Ticketing department, like all things associated with Delfont Mackintosh Theatres, was a slick operation. It had evolved in ways that served all customers whether booking online, phoning up for tickets and those who visited the different theatre box offices. The team helped every single customer take that first exciting step to experiencing a magical and memorable show experience.

When the announcement came that all theatres would be closed in March 2019, it was like the edge of a cliff suddenly giving way. All shows were cancelled or postponed until further notice, no-one knew when or if things would return and the team that remained had to deal with the emotions of an uncertain personal future, saying goodbye to colleagues and the seemingly unscalable task of dealing with customers wanting to return or extend every ticket they’d sold.

the outcome

A 5-star customer service brand, doesn’t earn their reputation by chance. It comes from a long-standing commitment to finding the best way forward, whilst staying true to who they are, what they do and why they do it.

Instead of panicking or taking short-term safety measures, they used the unique circumstances of the pandemic to reconnect with their core belief that ‘it all starts with a ticket’. This allowed them to take advantage of the moment, refocus everything on serving the customers ticketing needs and build an environment that would help them come back stronger.

Over the 12-18 months that followed, the teams redesigned and remodelled ‘how’ they did things. This involved implementing an on-line system that would cope with the new way in which customers wanted to interact and managing the phenomenal task of refunding, exchanging or issuing credit vouchers for £35+million worth tickets sold.

As part of regular interventions with both the management and the returning teams we’ve been able to support them in maintaining their balance throughout. This has involved careful reconnection at every step to the purpose and values of the brand – who they are, what they do and why they do it and facilitating discussions that helped them to make informed choices about what to stop, start or do differently, whilst staying true to what they believed in.

With all 8 theatres now fully open, new systems and processes in place and the job of selling tickets happily taken over from refunds, we’re on hand to help the team improve their balance. They’ve continued to learn and adjust as they go and become more accepting that you can’t always get it right first time, now focusing directly on delivering exceptional service to customers, improving how they work as a team and continuing to support each other as change and uncertainty remains part of everyday life.

reflections

When organisations and teams are forced to change in response to circumstances beyond their control, it can trigger a number of emotional reactions – fear, resistance, panic, haphazard decision making…. but for organisations with a clear purpose, it can offer an opportunity to adjust and evolve.

The experience the sales and ticketing team have been through has been relentless and exhausting, but they’ve put themselves in a much stronger position to survive and succeed going forward. We look forward to our ongoing balance activity with them.