Hi everyone:
We're a new organization (in our third season). We're struggling with who should oversee/approve House Seats and Comps. Ticket Services reports directly to the Director of Marketing who oversees all things tickets. As the Ticket Services Manager I've no purview over seating right down to which seats are held each season.
I'd love to know how other organizations manage this. As a 20 year veteran I struggle with this setup a bit. It can be a challenge at times to manage inventory properly without having charge of it. Each department (Marketing, Development, Executive) are assigned their own set of seats each season, they in turn must go to the DoM, tell him what seats they want to use and why and he then submits these requests to me via e-mail. House seats are requested via a written form, approved and signed for by the DoM and then passed down to me.
Any insight and experience is greatly appreciated!!!
Michelle
It sounds like we are a larger organization than you, but here's how we do it. Comps and Holds are handled somewhat differently, but they do have some overlap. The box office (Ticketing Services) coordinates all of this, with oversight by the senior management team.
Comps: There is a short list of people in our organization who are considered "trusted" to make comp ticket requests. They are allowed to operate on behalf of the box office to set up comp tickets, staff discount, or pay-at-door ticket orders for their guests. In the case of contractual artist comps or standing comp offers to staff, the staff producer or manager is the one funneling those requests and keeping track of those limits, NOT the box office.
Holds: The senior management team sets hold allocations for all events at the beginning of the season. Each type of hold (press, artist, development, etc.) has an overseer (outside of the box office) who is tasked with releasing unused holds by communicating with the box office manager as the performance date approaches. The use of those holds are requested by staff members in the appropriate area. The senior management team (including Director of Marketing) can at any point start a discussion with the box office and a hold code's overseer in the event that unused holds are not being released in a timely manner.
All requests for holds OR comps come to the box office manager via email or a written form, which details the requested seating location and payment method if necessary. All departments using holds have access to Tessitura in some way so that they can view the live seat map and run hold detail reports. In the event that a request comes to the box office that can not be fulfilled (sold out perf, no holds remaining, etc) the box office coordinates with the requestor to make a suitable accommodation. All requests fulfilled by the box office are confirmed via email (from tessitura) to the requestor. This is done by assigning the requestor as the order initiator. (This is also a way to see how many comps are being requested by each trusted staff person.)
In some particularly high-volume cases, the box office may deputize another member of the organization to place orders in Tessitura directly for their department. This makes things more convenient for the department, less pressure on the box office, and removes one layer of communication from the transaction (reducing errors).
To have all of those requests funnel through DoM in your organization seems a little bit strange to me. That extra communication hop seems an unnecessary opportunity for error. If DoM is not comfortable delegating any of this to the box office yet, perhaps he or she should be processing these requests in Tessitura directly...
Hi Nick:
What a fantastic reply! Thank you! This is very helpful. Yes, it is very strange and I'm trying to move it away from this model as we're finding requests are frequently forgotten, arrive at last minute, dropped, lost in e-mail, etc. Definitely creates more errors.
We are a small organization with a 500 seat theater and a 150 seat blackbox but are doing 200 performances so far for 15/16.
Thank you again!
Hi Michelle,
Our auditoria are similarly sized to you. We have fixed holds in each space for Senior Management, Press and Development. They book their own tickets directly through Tess. We moved away from excel as we had the same issues before Tess with miscommunication etc... We've found this works well for us as they can also determine who is o be COMP'd/discounted etc... We release our holds usually 2.5hrs before the perf but frequently request to reduce them down/pull them back sooner for busy perfs.
There are still the inevitable random comp requests that come through our Ticketing & Sales Manager or Coordinators but it limits the admin and the potential messiness for us to operate this way. We use the notes field religiously to trap who authorised comps that we book in to ensure there's a trail if they are queried at a later date. We also check in with stakeholders on their no-shows so they can follow up as well as requesting that COMPs are collected by 7pm to ensure no gaps in the house.
Hope this helps. Aoife