||| February 1, 2010 by William Rogers

Kick-off to Customer Service

Over the next few months AEE will focus on an extremely crucial component in our efforts to attract and retain new audiences…CUSTOMER SERVICE.

Kicking things off will be the February 24th Open Forum: Beyond the Art: Build Audiences by Designing Branded Experiences at all Touchpoints. We will be hearing from Denis Weil, Vice President, Concept and Design at McDonald’s Corporation and he will be offering fishbowl consulations to three organizations. (We will hear more form those fish in later posts.) Make your reservations early!

Following the Open Forum, will be two learning circles on the topic of customer service. Applications are now being accepted for participation in these valuable workshops. Click on an event to learn more or to apply.

In addition to these workshops and events, you will be hearing from peers and experts on the AEE blog, so we hope you will check back regularly. And to get ourselves in the customer service spirit (sounds fun huh?), check out a few of the articles below that we think will help spark ideas, questions, and solutions regarding how you relate to your customers and how they relate to you and your venue.

Customers Demand Engagement : From campaign- to consumer-centric
From eMarketer.com, 1/29/10
“According to the Alterian "Annual Survey 2009" report, marketers must move from siloed campaigns to listening to and communicating with consumers across channels.”

Email Collection Must Be a Top Priority
Posted by Erik Gensler on the blog of his company, Capacity Interactive, 9/26/09
“Your box office staff should be required to ask for an email address. You can have the staff ask ‘Would you like to join our email list to receive news and special offers?’”

Think outside the point of sale. Customer Service is about the physical space as well: Obstacles speed up exiting crowds
From Discovery.com, 11/30/09
"If you've been to a big concert, or a ball game, with a big crowd of other people, you know what happens when it's time to leave. No matter how big the exit is, everybody gets jammed up and it goes really slowly. Engineers in Japan have been looking at what's going on and how to fix it."