Something as simple as changing the name of the department from Marketing to Fan Experience & Sales can help fans know who to call. That worked at Kansas State University in Manhattan, where Scott Garrett is associate athletic director.
Making staff accessible is also key. Kansas State Athletics published direct staff phone numbers and email addresses on line, so fans can actually reach the right person without going through a general customer service maze.
“And we extended our hours one hour on each end,” he said of the offices, which are now open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Garrett joined Phil Wang, University of California, Irvine, and Meghan Carrigan, PPL Center, Allentown, Pa., is a discussion on Reinventing the Customer Experience during PACnet ’15 in Newport Beach, Calif.
Kansas State faced mismanagement, trust and organizational morale and self perception issues when John Currie was named athletic director in 2009. Currie immediately set some new goals, among them to provide the best fan experience in the Big 12, Garrett said. Currie instituted Town Halls where he solicited feedback from the fans and published his own direct contact information.
There is a ticket services live chat room, Garrett continued. And every member of the K-State staff is instructed to greet every fan with “Welcome to K-State.”
There is a Committee on Welcome to K-State, which develops new initiatives to improve the fan experience. They came up with ideas like a First-Time Visitor Certificate and event staff rewards, Fan Guides and a fan ambassador program, the latter of which involves 10-15 volunteers now. Fan ambassadors walk around the concourse and help people, Garrett noted. The nice thing is the budget for the ambassadors program in minimal – less than $2,000 total — for uniforms and complimentary tickets.
The ambassadors are also symbolic of the push toward the personal touch at K-State. “We’re not into CRM (customer relations management) right now. My role is to walk around and take notes. If a seat cushion is broken, we fix it. It’s a more personal touch than data.”
He instituted the Family Reunion, an annual event coming up on its fourth iteration this year, the goal of which is to sell out the first football game of the season. The average ticket price is $45 per season, but for the first annual Family Reunion, it was $8-$9.
Fan satisfaction is through the roof and K-State has sold out 29 football games since 2009.
“We’ve set records for attendance in every sport we ticket, with $12 million-$17 million in revenues and a 40 percent growth in annual ticket revenues,” Garrett said.
Asked if discounting tickets was key to that, Garrett said it might have been in 2009. “We had to get them in here and get them back,” he said. “When we print the catalog, discounts are included, but we don’t panic and prepare in advance for visiting teams returning tickets. Holds are not dumped into discounts.”
UC Irvine, which is a nonfootball school with 28,000 students, used technology, “improved touch points,” to improve customer service, Wang said.
“We’ve seen a huge adoption rate for mobile tickets,” he said. They target markets through a CRM database using selective messaging.
Though the athletics department does not control concessions or parking, they have partnered with Aramark and the parking department to load prepayments on the tickets.
Average attendance is up 44 percent at university events and overall ticket revenue is up 92 percent in the three years since they have been with Paciolan, “just from improving the fan experience,” Wang said. Corporate sponsorship has increased 64 percent. “There are measurable results from our three-year implementation plan.”
PPL Center is a brand new, 10,000-seat arena with two tenant teams. Arena staff is educating the public, by sending pre-event emails with information on the event and what people can bring to the arena.
There are four main entrances and that has also been a matter of educating people. The first large concert saw everyone trying to enter through one Hamilton Street entrance. Now they are sending out information about the best entrance to use based on specific seat locations.
So far, 12 percent of customers have selected mobile delivery of tickets, she said.
Interviewed for this story: Scott Garrett, (785) 532-2880; Phil Wang, (949) 824-7591; Meghan Carrigan, (484) 273-4412