Transcript

Felix: When we moved most tickets onto phones, I expected complaints from older customers. In reality, the most annoyed people were often younger customers whose battery had died or whose screen was broken. They assumed digital meant easy. Rosa: Yes, and staff made that worse at first by treating every phone problem as unusual. Once something happens every evening, it is part of the system, not an exception. Felix: We now keep a charging cable at the desk, but I do not think the answer is to offer a printer to everyone. If customers print automatically, we lose the main benefit of having a ticket that can be updated when the time or entrance changes. Rosa: I agree about updates. Last month one entrance had to close, and we changed the gate number on the digital ticket. People who saved an image did not receive the change, though, which shows that even within 'digital' there are different behaviours. Felix: That made me less enthusiastic about telling customers to save a copy in advance. It solves a weak signal but keeps the old information. Rosa: We changed the ticket so the key details are visible before the code. People used to open the ticket and show us the first thing they saw, while the entrance name was hidden lower down. The design was technically neat but practically backwards. Felix: What about customers without phones? We let them collect a printed ticket at the box office with the booking name and address. I worried that would slow the queue, but the numbers are small. Rosa: And the printed version is intentionally simple. We used to reproduce the whole confirmation email, including ads and travel advice. Now it contains the event, seat, entrance and code. Nothing else. Felix: One thing I resisted was putting tickets inside our own app. Marketing loved the idea because customers would keep the app on their phones. Rosa: I resisted it too. Buying one concert ticket should not require getting extra software and creating another password. A web link does the job. Felix: The app would allow push messages, though. Rosa: True, but email and text can already handle urgent information. The advantage was mainly ours, not the customer's. Felix: Fair point. We have had more success with wallet apps that customers already use. Saving a ticket there is a choice, and the ticket can still change. Rosa: Another lesson was not to use the same instructions for every event. At a seated theatre, people need the correct door and row. At an outdoor event, the important thing may be the time window and what cannot be brought inside. Felix: Which sounds obvious, but using the same layout is tempting because they save staff time. Rosa: Exactly. A shared layout should remind us what to check, not force the same information onto different events. Felix: We also experimented with making the code enormous on screen. Scanning became quicker, but customers could no longer see the seat number without moving down the screen. Rosa: Which is a good reminder that one successful measure can damage another. The fastest possible scan is not the only aim; people also need to check where they are going before they reach us. Felix: Another small decision was whether to put a customer's full name on the ticket. It helped people tell tickets apart when one person had bought several, but it also created problems when a friend used a ticket bought by somebody else. Rosa: We now show the purchaser's first name only when it helps manage a group booking. Again, the question is what information has a job to do. More information is not automatically more helpful. Felix: Security is similar. We once added extra personal details to the ticket because we thought more information meant more protection. Staff then spent time comparing names that did not matter for most events. Rosa: Now the code does the security work unless the event has a specific age or identity rule. Felix: So I would not describe our system as only digital. It is mainly digital, with a small paper route for people who need it. Rosa: That distinction matters. The goal is not to prove that one format has won; it is to remove unnecessary steps while keeping a realistic alternative.