Elevating the Event Venue Experience

Experience Action. Let's stop just talking about customer experience, employee experience and the experience of leaders. Let's turn ideas into action. Your host, Jeannie Walters, is an award-winning customer experience expert, international keynote speaker and founder of Experience Investigators, a strategic consulting firm helping companies increase sales and customer retention through elevated customer experiences. Ready set action.

You're a CX Change Agent trying to do right by your customers and your organization, and I'm Jeannie Walters and I'm here to cheer you on. So let's get right to it with the next question on the Experience Action podcast.

Hey, Jeannie, we're old friends. This is Clint. Nice to see this awesome platform that you're sharing with folks. I'm starting work soon with an incredible music venue, an art space that has several locations: 6,000 capacity outdoor, 550 internal, and also various courtyards and bars that we can have performances at. But in order to attract customers and also great artists to perform, we really want to focus on the customer experience, the experience for both the artists and the concert goers. Any great examples of that in the live entertainment business that you can share and also any tips on how to begin that investigation? Thanks so much.

I love this question and, yes, I want to say, first of all, big shout out to my friend Clint. He is a very experience driven professional, and I just want to say, C lint, you're going to rock this. This is going to be right up your alley. I'm so excited for you. Now I do have a few ideas for you as you tackle this new challenge. It sounds like an amazing place, and this is what I love about customer experience work. We can work in finance or technology or global manufacturing, or we can work in local venues that serve the community, and all of that requires similar skills when we talk about customer experience. So, Clint, you mentioned a few things that I wanted to really highlight. I love that you're thinking about both the performers and the people who will be attending those performances. So let's think about how to really understand that.

The first thing I would do if I were in your shoes is to look around at where are people spending their time. Now, I say this because it's not necessarily competition with going to one concert versus another. Today, people make really very critical decisions about where they spend their personal time. There's actually a lot of data that shows that after the pandemic, people started really prioritizing their personal time in different ways. I talk about this in our keynotes, about how we really are competing with the decision of is this worth my time? So, whenever you're approaching the customer journey, think about where else could they be spending their time. What's going on in the community that might bring them out instead of that, and what is the real draw? Because you know there's always going to be somebody who's interested in one concert versus another, but we want to make sure that we're offering something that is delightful, that is easy, that is convenient, that gives them something a little extra.

So the first step here is to understand your audience and their journey. [ding] So you talked about these separate groups and I think that's so smart. So what I would do is actually start with one. Think about are you trying to draw in the right performers to actually attract that audience? Are you trying to just build the audiences for the performers that you're getting? And I know you're probably trying to do both, but I would start with one and think about what is that journey like?

Now, I'm sure you've heard me say this before, but we have to think about the journey, starting before we think it would and going way after. So instead of thinking about necessarily the moment of the concert or the performance. That's a very, you know, specific artistic decision, and so people will go there and it's a very subjective experience in many ways. But what I have said in the past is that when we think about the actual experience, we have to go back to what was it like to make that decision? How did I hear about that? What was the ticket buying experience like? Did I feel assured that my money was well spent? Now I've been to a lot of various venues where it sounds great on paper and then you go online, you buy a ticket and it suddenly feels very transactional. You get that kind of ugly receipt that says yep, this is your ticket, don't lose it. You might get some sort of notification that tells you about how you can't park anywhere or something like that.

But a lot of the build up to the actual experience isn't as kind of connected to the brand of what you're trying to do. So I would look at each step of the journey like that and think about what can we do to reassure somebody that they have made the right choice with us. What can we do to help them with the anxiety of trying a new thing? We often forget that all of us experience a little anxiety when we're going to a new place, when there's change in our routine. Where are we going to park? How do we get there? Is there going to be a line? What if it's raining? So really think about those things and, instead of doing what a lot of organizations do, which is just send everything in an email or disclaimer, think about how can you almost make that an experience. Maybe some reminders or opting in to certain things. Like you know, we'll text you to let you know what the weather will be like so you can plan your experience here. Something that really feels proactive and kind of nurturing can really help. So I would look at the experience, the journey, from that perspective. You can do this a variety of different ways. Hopefully you're collecting some feedback. If not, that's okay. You have other data.

You know, probably if you've had people who come to multiple events at that location, I would seek them out. I would talk to them about what they would improve if they had that magic wand. I would ask them about if they would be interested in maybe a referral program where, if they bring a plus one who's never been to the venue before, they get a special experience, and that can be anything from a discount to a little swag to maybe a place closer to the stage. You can get really creative with these things. But I would think about all of those different points where we can really get to know who we're serving. So if you're talking to performers, maybe you want to talk to them about what is it like at other venues? What have you enjoyed about performing there? Who has reached out to you and made you feel like you've, you know, selected the right place to perform? Really, start getting to know who you're serving, and then I would turn that into a customer journey mapping opportunity and really figure out where are those moments where we can turn up the delight. So a lot of times when we approach journey mapping, it becomes an exercise in, "you know what. We have to fix this and we have to fix this. And, yes, it's a great place to find those pain points, but it's also a great opportunity to innovate around

different moments along your customer journey. So if you are looking for ways to work within the parameters you have. We don't have unlimited budgets, we can't. You know, maybe the dressing room for performers is too small. Well, we might not be able to fix that right away. That might not be even feasible, based on the construction of the building. So what can we do? Well, can we kind of make fun of it, can we let them know that, yes, we're going to have a small room, but you're going to get XYZ in that dressing room. We're going to acknowledge it, we're going to embrace it and own it with them and make it more of a partnership.

So look for those types of moments where maybe you can't fix something, but you can turn up those moments of delight [ding] and then, as you roll things out, as you experiment, use that opportunity to really find out is this working? Is this helping? I mean, I know you personally, Clint, so I know that you have wonderful observation skills. But get the whole staff involved. Ask your bartenders and your servers and your AV people. Get those folks involved and ask them to let you know, say you know what, if you hear somebody complain about this, if you notice something, if you see that people are really struggling to navigate in a certain area, that's the thing we want to know and this is a perfect opportunity for Monday morning quarterbacking, having a debrief after every event for a while, where you say, okay, who noticed what? What are we going to do about it? How do we prioritize? What can we do better next time?

This is really about empowering your staff to not only feel brave and bold and be able to be honest with you about what they see that is and isn't working, but it's also about empowering them to make the right choice. So this comes back to knowing who you are as a brand and knowing what the promises that you've made your attendees and your customers. So if I had my magic wand, I would say start with that CX Mission Statement. Make sure you know who you are and what is the promise, because then you can really empower the staff to do the right thing according to that. So all of this requires this wonderful cycle of review and adapt and try new things and then review, adapt, try again. Some of this can be based on the feedback that you hear. Some of this can be based on operational data. Some of this can simply be based on your observations. But make this a habit and a cycle and empower everybody in that organization to really see themselves as part of delivering that experience.

I think this place sounds amazing and I can't wait to come visit you there, and I'm sure that they are going to see lots of success with you in this role. So thank you so much for you know recording this question for us. Thank you for all you do and for everybody out there. Every single day, you are making a difference and that is no small thing.

So I know sometimes it can feel like we're running uphill all the time, trying to get people to understand that customer experience is so much more than just delivering customer service or just tracking customer feedback. But you are doing it and I so appreciate this community. So thank you for this great question. Keep them coming and don't forget we have all these resources for you. So check out experienceinvestigators. com and don't forget about cxiflightschool. com. So thank you everybody for being here and I can't wait to talk to you next week. To learn more about our strategic approach to experience. Check out free resources at experienceinvestigators. com, where you can sign up for our newsletter, our Year of CX program and more, and please follow me, Jeannie Walters, on LinkedIn.