Tips: Cancellation Strategy (Exchange/Donation/Refund Processing and Messaging)

We've rolled out just this

1. Cancellation email to segements
2. Button to WordFly Survey with options Donate/Gift Voucher/Exchange/Refund + Feedback
3. Confirmation Page with ling to Donation Page.

I'm surprised with the ratios. And the feedback is incredible - really good sentiment to send to the artists/troops

There are only 2 of us and I'm servicing the needs of the rest of the company and strategic as well so we are trying to offset as much direct customer contact as possible.

Are you using the seat release utility at all? If so, do you go to all orders for the cancelled performance and change the order category? How are you handling that?

For those of you who have implemented a form for refunds/exchanges/ticket donations, I am wondering how you are managing this in terms of when you issue refunds? Are you providing a grace period for the ticket holder to respond before you start doing automatic refunds? Or, are you putting the full responsibility on the consumer to decide what they want to do with their tickets?  Thank you!

Hi Sara! We are using a form in conjunction with patron outreach for now, since we are still trying to make sure folks know about upcoming canceled events. However, the refund process (for us at least) depends on the presenting company's choice/needs. For some shows, we are automatically issuing full refunds and suggesting patrons make a contribution to the presenting organization if they wish to support them during this uncertain time.  For others, we give as many options as we can: full refund, exchange, gift certificate, etc.

Once the dust settles a bit, we will likely send out another email letting people know that if we don't hear from them by <date>, we will issue them a refund to their original method of payment. I basically wanted to give everyone a chance to wrap their heads around what's going on before blasting them with deadlines, especially since we'll have our hands busy with the patrons who do respond in a timely fashion!

Hi Tessiturians, I want to update you on some things we have working right now, given comments in this thread -

Our software development team is working on functionality that will help with this issue. This week we will release a new Event Cancellation Utility, which is based on the Performance Seat Release Utility. With the Event Cancellation Utility, you will be able to apply funds from returned tickets to a gift certificate, toward a contribution, or to an on account payment method. 

The Event Cancellation Utility will be available as a Shared Report, and will be included in our next Service Pack along with further enhancements. When the Event Cancellation Utility is available, we will post an update in our product announcements. Licensees hosted in RAMP can then request it through a help ticket, and our team will install it for you. Licensees with local installs can access the utility once it is available.

Once this is complete, we will be turning our attention to adding Credit Card Refunds as an option. 

Thanks,

Chris Szalaj
Product Owner, Business Facing Products
Tessitura Network

Great work Heath! There are only 2 of us in Ticketing here at QB as well. Crazy times indeed!

One wo(man) show here, so I feel you! At least we are a small organization with only about 2,000 patrons. 

I ended up creating a custom SSMS report for us to use. I looked at Analytics but we're only on 15.0.3 still, so a lot of useful fields in 15.1 aren't available to us yet. If you're on 15.1, you might be able to do everything within Analytics. I'm not sure how much of my report would be useful to other organizations, but if you send me your email address I'd be happy to share what I've got!

No we're not using that at all. We're just going individually as we reach out to patrons/they reach out to us.

michael.dorsey@state.mn.us, thank you!

We have a system in place that we are trying:

An email with 3 buttons will go to ticket holders of a canceled concert: Donate | Receive Credit |  Receive a Refund

When a user clicks one of those buttons, it triggers a CSI for the patron's account and updates it accordingly. Also, a notification email is sent to our customer service staff informing of the CSI with all the patron information on file.  There are 3 separate CSIs setup for each button.  We have protectors in place as well, in case a user clicks more than 1 button.  We also state that if there request is more complicated than those 3 options, to call or email us.

 Thank you for sharing!

How does the button trigger a CSI from the email?

Hi - We are using Prospect2, probably should have stated that first!  When each button is clicked it triggers an automation that in turn delivers a webhook trigger back to Tessitura that creates the CSI for the patron. 

Thanks!

Krystal, this might be less robust (the CSI wouldn't include their ticket info), but if you have the buttons link to Wordfly Pages Landing Pages that just say something like "Thank you, you're response has been recorded, we'll get back with you soon, etc..." then you can pull the Click Through history out of T_EPROMOTION_RESPONSE_HISTORY and create dynamic lists based on who clicked through those buttons.

This post isn't letting me format the SQL very well, but I could send you it in a file. I use this to create a list of anyone who clicks our Newsletter button in a triggered campaign we run. But you could create 3 SQL Lists and just change out the bolded URL ending below to the 3 WF Landing Pages URLs. Then schedule that Create CSI Bulk custom report (I know you guys have it, because I got it from Sydney!) to run off the dynamic lists with whatever settings and notes you want your CSI to have.

You'd also need to change out the bottom part in bold to suppress anyone who already got their CSI (instead of Attributes, which is what I use mine for)

SELECT DISTINCT a.customer_no
FROM V_CUSTOMER_WITH_PRIMARY_GROUP AS a WITH (NOLOCK)
WHERE a.inactive = 1
AND a.customer_no IN (Select distinct customer_no
FROM T_EPROMOTION_RESPONSE_HISTORY
where url_no in (
SELECT id FROM TR_EPROMOTION_URL
where url LIKE '%pages/2019-Newsletter-Opt-In-Landing-Page%'
)
and customer_no not in (
SELECT distinct customer_no
FROM TX_CUST_KEYWORD
where keyword_no = 580))

This version could work if you replace the italics below with the exact text from the Create Bulk CSI utility settings. ("Needs Refund Processed" or "Donate Tickets Back"). Or something similar, depending on what works for you guys.

SELECT DISTINCT a.customer_no
FROM V_CUSTOMER_WITH_PRIMARY_GROUP AS a WITH (NOLOCK)
WHERE a.inactive = 1
AND a.customer_no IN (Select distinct customer_no
FROM T_EPROMOTION_RESPONSE_HISTORY
where url_no in (
SELECT id FROM TR_EPROMOTION_URL
where url LIKE '%pages/2019-Newsletter-Opt-In-Landing-Page%'
)
and customer_no not in (
SELECT DISTINCT customer_no FROM T_CUST_ACTIVITY
where notes = 'insert notes texted used in Create Bulk CSI Utility'))

Email me if you want to look into it more!