Resources
Customer Experience
Writers’ Theatre on Audience Engagement
Kate Lipuma, Executive Director of Writers’ Theatre, shared the recent successes and challenges they’ve had with audience engagement at an AEE roundtable. Check out her presentation to learn more about Writers’ positioning, customer service and social media strategies.
Casting Customer Service Learning Circle Worksheets
In Session 2 of Casting Customer Service, instructor Philippe Ravanas, took participants through the steps of building a customer service blueprint. Download the blank documents to build your own Service Blueprint and Customer Journey
Casting Customer Service: The Theater of Audience Experience
In the seminal book titled The Experience Economy, Joseph Pine and James Gilmore urged every company to find inspiration in the performing arts to improve their customer services. “Work is theatre” they wrote. “Whenever employees work in front of customers, an act of theatre occurs. Every action contributes to the total experience being staged. Business performances must rival those featured on Broadway. With theatre as the model, even mundane tasks engage customers in a memorable way.”
Ironically, by focusing all energies on the art on stage or on the walls, arts organizations can make this “customer theatre” feel like work, neglecting an important aspect of the total audience experience. This AEE Learning Circle series presented all the dimensions of customer experience and satisfaction and provided the tools to assess them and ‘script’ customer experience beyond the mere attendance of the play. Whether your organization focuses on writing, visual arts, or performance, these learning circle presentations will help you find ways to give your audiences experiences to remember, and talk about.
Session 1 presentation
Casting Customer Service: Session 2
In Session 2 of Casting Customer Service, instructor Philippe Ravanas, took participants through the steps of building a customer service blueprint. View session 1 here and session 3 here.
Casting Customer Service: Session 3
Customer service is all about people and session 3 of Casting Customer Service focuses on just that. View the slide show on improving patron experience and learn how to train a winning team of front end staff that will ensure the best possible experience for your audience.
Click here to see Session 1 and here for Session 2.
Beyond the Art: Build Audiences by Designing Branded Experiences at all Touchpoints
To view just the slide show, click here.
Artistic quality is critical, but other factors also influence what audiences see, hear, experience and talk about. People start to develop impressions about your organization’s work from the moment they receive your program announcement, and continue to be influenced by everything from their box office experiences to the time it takes to exit the parking lot after your event. All of these touch points shape your audiences’ future decisions about ticket purchases and attendance. Knowing how many chances you have to convey your organization’s view and approach to your customers and how to maximize each of those opportunities is critical to building a satisfied and loyal audience.
In his AEE Open Forum presentation, Denis Weil, Vice President, Concept and Design at McDonald’s Corporation, explains how to apply a user centered approach to develop or re-design your customers’ experiences. Learn how your arts organization can use low-cost, iterative design and prototype testing methods to innovate the service aspects of your customers’ experiences. His presentation was followed by a “fishbowl consultation” during which Denis strategized with several arts organizations of varying sizes and artistic disciplines that were working through the same real-life challenges that you face every day.