How Satisfied Are You With Your Ticketing Software?

While performing some work for Venture clients recently, my development team and I found the need to perform some research and in the process, I reached into my files for a resource that I sadly neglected to mention here when it was released: The 2015 Ticketing Software Satisfaction Survey report from Carnegie Mellon’s Arts Management & Technology Laboratory.

Published every few years (or so), the report continues to grow into an enormously useful, dispassionate overview of ticketing systems.

Adaptistration People 174The 101-page report by Dr. Brett Ashley Crawford, Danielle Gewurz, Stewart Urist, Kristen Sorek West, and Christine Sajewski shares the most up-to-date data and analysis on ticketing satisfaction, usage, and needs of based on responses from over 1,000 readers from organizations across the United States and Canada.

It isn’t a ticketing provider review but there’s plenty of information that performing arts organizations and presenters can use in order to help shape their project scope when considering providers.

Like all things related to online ticketing and box office, it is crucial that you first understand the differences between that functionality and a customer relationship management (CRM) solution, and web development. In many cases, ticketing and CRM functionality are bundled by a single provider while in other instances, they are mutually exclusive. Regardless, you’ll end up having to get those pieces of the puzzle working with your web developer.

If this all seems like a lot of spinning plates to keep an eye on, no worries, I’ve got just the for you: Understanding The Relationship Between Websites, Box Office, and CRM Reloaded 2016.

Since the first version was published in 2011, it has been one of the most popular articles at Adaptistration. It provides a clear explanation of each component in the website, box office/ticketing, and CRM relationship along with highlighting where they do and do not intersect.

Between that article and the 2015 Ticketing Software Satisfaction Survey report, you’ll be in far better shape to navigate those waters.

About Drew McManus

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house.

I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why.

In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, hack the arts, and love a good coffee drink.

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