Tracy Noll
How many folks reading this would still be in college if they could? I tell you, there are days when I totally would! In part three of our series on working college and university ticket offices (click to read Part 1 and Part 2), we profile two INTIX members who are living that dream. They started working ticketing on campus while they were still undergraduates and then made ticketing college events their career.
But the two couldn’t be any different. Tracy Noll, Director of Sales & Development Services for Penn State University, has been a Nittany Lion all of her career. “Almost 36 years ago, I stopped by to visit a high school friend who was a receptionist at Eisenhower Auditorium during one of my class breaks,” she recalls. “At that time, I had been working in a local drug store for six years and wasn’t looking for another job. For some reason, when she asked me if I’d want a job in the ticket office, I said ‘Uh … sure?’ Within five minutes, I was sitting in front of Jill Baldi being interviewed. I was hired on the spot and so my career in ticketing began.”
Wendy Brown
By contrast, Michigan State University Ticket Manager Wendy Brown has cris-crossed the country working for various college ticketing departments. She started while still an undergraduate at the University of Colorado, then remained as a full-time employee. Ticketing jobs subsequently followed at the University of Miami, University of the Pacific, the University of Maryland, the University of Washington in Seattle, and currently Michigan State.
So, what has been the longtime appeal? “Campuses are just lovely to work at and to walk around during your lunch hour. Driving into work is always lovely. Students are always entertaining. Some people dread working student dates at events, but I love it. What can I say? College ticketing is fun, energetic and exciting!”
Noll says, “I loved the excitement of resolving customer issues. I worked part-time for about nine months and then a full-time position opened. I still had 12 credits to go until I could graduate, but I decided to take the full-time job and finish my degree by taking a three-credit course each semester.”
Of course, both have seen some pretty major changes in ticketing since they started. Brown says, “I started in the late 1980s, so I have seen the whole evolution of technology. I remember when fax machines started, and we were like, ‘Wow! Is this going to put FedEx out of business?’ I worked on the first webpage at the University of Miami. I sent and received my first emails at University of the Pacific, along with group chat. When I was at the University of Maryland, I remember saying, ‘There is this new thing called Facebook that the kids are on.’ When I eventually got to Michigan State, someone said, ‘You know, there is this thing called Twitter.’ Now there is TikTok and Instagram. It’s funny. When you work on a campus, you really see the beginnings of a lot of these movements, and you see them evolve.”
Noll, former INTIX Chair from 2008 to 2010, remembers being on Ticketron when she started working in the ticket office in August 1988. Subsequent deals were signed with Select Ticketing and then Ticketmaster. “Through all of these software changes, our ability to track our customers’ journey increased,” she says. “We went from just selling a ticket at the window and having the most basic information about who purchased the tickets to knowing what sites they found us on and how they purchased their tickets and what genres they prefer in order to target market them in the future.”
She continues, “The biggest change is the lack of customer interaction. As we encourage our patrons to purchase online, I feel we are losing the connections we have built with them over the years. The human contact that makes them feel more loyal to our organization has been reduced to a few clicks on a website. So many of our older patrons struggle with purchasing online and some just give up. This is why I’ve removed the phone fee this season. I want to be able to walk these folks who need a little extra help through their ticket-buying process.”
At the same time, there are a number of unique aspects of ticketing college and university events that very much appeal to both women. Noll says the demographics of Penn State’s patrons is the most unique aspect for her. She states that “30% of our audiences are PSU students from age 18–24, and around 40% are retired. We have one of the largest alumni bases in the country and so many of them want to retire here. This causes quite a challenge when trying to book artists that will appeal to both of these age groups!”
While Noll focuses on her campus’s arts and entertainment events, Brown is 100% athletics. “We do all of the sports,” she says. “As such, you have to focus on a million different things and keep a lot of balls in the air. I try and keep things as consistent as possible across the board, across all of the sports. I use some of the lower-demand sports such as soccer or volleyball as kind of the entry-level sports for new employees to come in and learn to run games. If they can handle it, then you can work them up to the bigger events.”
In terms of advice to any young INTIX member looking to make the college ticketing game their permanent game, both Brown and Noll shared some wisdom. The former urges, “My biggest takeaway now that I am toward the end of my career has been working hard and working smart are just as important as networking.”
Noll, meanwhile, advises, “Keep your customers happy! I’m not saying the customer is always right because they often are not. But finding a middle ground that keeps them happy is in the best interest of all. The ripple effect is real. If you send one person off angry and upset, they are going to share that with their friends, who may pass that off to their friends, etc. And before you know it, your reputation is tanked. It’s much easier to bend a rule or two to keep that first person happy than to repair the effects of sending them away upset. I’m not saying you have to give in to everyone. Sometimes just hearing them out and letting them know they have been heard is enough.”
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