Prepare for your busiest days in the box office, knowing you’re ready to meet demand and maintain great customer service.
***
With the right ticketing box office software, you’ll be ready to meet demand and maintain great customer service, even in periods of peak sales.
Every box office team is familiar with the stories of ticketing gone wrong — customers stuck in lines, losing their place at the point of transaction or struggling with priority access codes. Too often, as demand for tickets rises, the quality of customer service falls.
There’s a common factor in these box office horror stories. If your ticketing software’s clunky or outdated, it’s unlikely to keep pace with online demand. If it looks slick on the surface, it may not have the robust foundations needed to handle pressure. If you rely on external providers, you’re putting your reputation and customer relationships into the hands of companies whose public profile is viewed ambivalently, at best.
With Spektrix, it’s possible to sell tickets at up to 10x the speed of similar systems — and to maintain a great customer experience along the way. With full control of your customer data, you can personalize the journey with upsells, pre-visit information and follow-up communications — turning your biggest events from box office headaches into seamless introductions to your program.
PR Disaster or Ticketing Triumph? The Importance of Smooth Onsales
The biggest events in your season can make or break patrons’ experiences. Yet the irony for box office teams is that the smoother the onsale, the less attention they receive.
When it goes well, customers barely notice the ticket-purchasing experience. They’ve got tickets in their hands, they’ve added the most sought-after merchandise, they’ve received an email telling them where to be and when. Everything feels easy, and they’re focused on the big show!
When it goes badly, on the other hand, everyone seems to know about it — from the executive suite to social media, the conversation can quickly turn negative. That’s unpleasant for box office teams, especially when there’s little to be done about it in the moment — a surge in incoming ticket requests can quickly overwhelm outdated or flimsy ticketing systems, leading to long lines, frustrated customers and potential revenue loss. For teams juggling all the pressures of pricing tiers, seating preferences, promotional offers and presales, even the best-laid plans can go quickly awry if your box office software and purchase pathway simply aren’t up to the task.
And the impact on your reputation shouldn’t be underestimated — loyal attendees are left feeling like venues or promoters don’t care, while newer customers can form a snap judgement based on a single negative interaction.
Ever-growing Onsale Capacity
Every year, as the Spektrix client base grows, we test the onsale capacity of our system a little bit further. And we haven’t found our limit yet! In an approach that’s unique within the arts sector, our servers draw on the infinite, adaptable capacity of Microsoft Azure’s elastic pools — allowing us to scale our usage based on demand and make downtime a thing of the past.
The chart above shows how Spektrix onsale capacity grows and grows, with our ‘fastest ever’ 10 minutes of ticket sales leaping up by over 1,000 from 2023 to 2024.
“Spektrix has revolutionized our approach to ticketing, memberships, and donations. We've noticed a significant decrease in complaints regarding the online purchasing process compared to our previous system and we no longer worry about system crashes during onsales. With Spektrix, we've elevated our game, transforming challenges into triumphs, complaints into compliments and revenue streams into rivers of success. It's simply outstanding.” –Saratoga Performing Arts Center, New York
What Customers Want From a Smooth Ticketing Onsale
Customers’ expectations seem simple — they want to get hold of tickets, fast, at a price they’re able to pay. But as every box office manager knows, it’s not quite that easy. Ask someone about a good ticketing experience, and they won’t have much to say. Ask them about a bad one, and prepare yourself for the tirade.
- Tickets! Ideally, let patrons choose their own seats from a plan — but if your system struggles with onsale overload, you might choose to offer them best available seats at their chosen price point.
- A good queueing experience. Holding people in a queue can speed up live transactions, and even create its own buzz. Spektrix has queueing built in at no extra charge, providing customers with live updates on their position and — critically — moving them securely from website to purchase pathway, with no risk of losing their place in line.
- Reliable VIP access. Your members are often your biggest spenders and donors. Access to priority onsales is granted in Spektrix the moment an eligible customer logs in — creating a smooth, secure experience for existing members, and upselling VIP access within the purchase pathway to enable instant premium benefits.
- Trustworthy pricing. FTC legislation rolled out in December to clamp down on junk fees and hidden charges across the US. It’s good practice, and now a legal requirement, to advertise prices openly and upfront, ensuring visitors aren’t hit with unanticipated add-ons at the end of the purchase path.
- Accessibility as standard. Customers with disabilities have the right — legally and ethically — to buy tickets online in the same way as everyone else. Invite people to register their needs in advance using automated tags in Spektrix or integrated national schemes like the Nimbus Access Card, ensuring they can find and purchase tickets that meet their needs - for example, with automatic access to wheelchair spaces, hearing loops, companion seats or other provisions.
- Trustworthy transactions. If customers are buying tickets for your organization, it’s best for everybody if they purchase through you directly. Big, centralized ticket agencies are viewed with increasing suspicion, as stories about excess fees, software failure, data breaches, and ticket touts fill the media. By keeping patrons on your own site throughout ticket purchase and payment, you’ll build their confidence in the process — and shave vital seconds off every transaction with rapid payment options like Google Pay and Apple Pay.
What Venues and Promoters Want From a Smooth Ticketing Onsale
The goals of the box office team may not be all that different from those of your customers. With the right technology, onsale day should be exciting — a moment to enjoy the buzz that surrounds your programme, and to see revenue pouring in.
- Reliable software. If you can’t rely on your ticketing software, any onsale feels daunting. And reliability means many things — a stable platform, a smooth integration with your website, secure transactions and accurate reporting. With ever-growing capacity, Spektrix provides speed, stability and security, as well as reconciliations that line up to the penny.
- Responsive support. You shouldn’t feel alone in preparing for a big onsale or program launch. At Spektrix, members of the Client Success team will work with you to plan and deliver a successful season launch, often joining you on a dedicated live chat to share results, respond to questions or address concerns throughout the day.
- Increased revenue. Slow transactions mean lost or delayed revenue. Poor customer experience reduces the chance of repeat visits. And agency sales limit your ability to communicate with your own audience with crucial pre-visit information, upsells or asks. With evidence that your ticketing system is fast and reliable, it’s easier to convince promoters to keep the bulk of the allocation in-house.
- Efficient setup. No matter how complex your seating plans, presales, locks or price tiers, it should be easy to set up your season. A layered approach to event building means Spektrix users never have to build the same element twice — choose and combine maps, layers, offers and more, so everything’s ready ahead of time.
- Flexible allocations. If part of your inventory’s allocated to high-profile agents like Ticketmaster, See, or TodayTix, they can sell directly from a shared seating plan through the Spektrix API — maximizing sales whilst maintaining visibility and control over your inventory.
With the right ticketing technology in place to do the heavy lifting, you’ll be free to focus on customer experience, with creative campaigns and human touchpoints by phone and at the box office counter.
Power Up Your Ticketing With Unlimited Server Capacity
The success or failure of your big onsales depends, above all, on the capability of your ticketing platform. Many arts organizations still rely on technology partners offering a traditional approach to cloud-based software — ring-fenced capacity, managed by their onsite team. A few may even rely on old-fashioned onsite servers, running from a closet in the box office — placing all the effort of maintenance and uptime on you and your team.
With Spektrix, you benefit from a platform that’s unique in the arts sector, designed to offer scale, reliability, security, and the most recent upgrades and improvements to every user — without any risk, cost or downtime.
In 2020, we undertook a transformative move to host the system using Microsoft Azure’s elastic pools, providing infinite capacity to scale up and down our usage in seconds. That approach — unique in the world of arts ticketing software — gives us all the computing power you need when things get busy, without paying for it when it’s not required.
It’s a solution that benefits everyone: from our users, to their audiences and to the planet.
Improve the Onsale Experience for Patrons and Box Office Teams
If your ticketing technology’s struggling to handle capacity, or creating a negative onsale experience for teams and audience members, it may be time to consider a change. Here are a few questions to ask when you’re assessing current or potential providers.
Onsale capacity
- How quickly could this system process 1,000 transactions in a seated venue, with customers choosing their own seats?
- How would you support us before and during a major onsale to ensure its success?
- If our inventory’s split across multiple promoters, what visibility or control do I have over allocations?
- Are there any add-on costs to increase server capacity, access support, or manage allocations?
Customer experience
Box Office team experience
Meet Spektrix at INTIX 2025
This article was sponsored by Spektrix.