Managing Music Festival Customer Support in the Holiday Period.

As the holiday period approaches between Christmas and New Year many music festival organisations let their staff take time off. How can organisers automate customer support during this time when they are operating with a skeleton staff to help potential ticket buyers who need assistance.

December if often a busy period for music festival organisers as it’s the most popular time to release news about their line-ups and headliners for next year's event. At the same time, they are pushing ticket sales and generating interest in their festivals and a consequence of this is an increase in enquiries about any number of issues at the same time staff go on holiday. To maintain good customer service during this period it is beneficial to consider automating support during this period.

Automated Emails. 
Automating Out Of Office (OOO) email messages is very straightforward to do yet almost no festival organisers set these up and often the messages are out of date. If staffing resources are scarce during holiday periods and customer emails cannot be replied to in a reasonable time it is sensible to have a relevant up to date OOO automated response to incoming email messages. It is essential to manage customer expectations by clearly stating dates that an office is closed and when they can expect a reply. Adding useful alternative information is also essential which may mean directing customers to FAQs or to a dedicated ticketing contact.

FAQs. 
Ensure that FAQs are up to date with all the relevant information about the forthcoming event with the latest information on line-ups and ticketing. Music festival organisers are generally good at having comprehensive FAQs on their website but before any holiday period they should check that these are up to date and match any recent news releases.

Ticketing. 
Many festival organisers use third-party ticketing organisations so it is essential that their contact details are on the festival website and social media as well as being included in any OOO email messages. Enquiries about ticketing is probably one of the most common that will be received in the holiday period because December usually sees a push on news and ticket sales. Fortunately, a good third-party ticketing company will have good customer support in place to handle the usual enquiries.

New Technology. 
Organisers could consider using automated bots on their website, although for many website visitors these can be a source of annoyance. Implementing a website bot is straightforward as it often just requires some code to be installed, however the key to its usefulness is how the automated questions and answers are created. A well thought out set of Q&A can go some way to answering the majority of questions a website visitor may have. 

No matter which solution festival organisers implement it is vital to have some customer support coverage during the holiday period because much time and effort has been invested in generating interest and potential ticket sales in December.

For festival organisers planning their events using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The Festival Pro platform is easy to use and has comprehensive features with specific modules for managing artists, contractors, venues/stages, vendors, volunteers, sponsors, guestlists, ticketing, cashless payments and contactless ordering.

Photo by MART PRODUCTION from Pexels

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