Hi everyone!
After a brutal day of receiving 60+ e-mails for comp requests (company, executive, marketing, development, etc) I thought, I'd love to know how other organizations manage this. It took two of us three hours to manage changes, switches from one name to another, did the company go over contracted comps etc.
I've been in ticketing a long time and we end up in this pickle every season. There must be someway to contain it.
How does everyone manage:
Comp requests
Comp changes / updates. Do you have a strict policy with company management, etc? Cut off times?
I've built a help desk through Spiceworks where requests "should" come through directly to the box office. Currently all things tickets, go through our Marketing Director who approves all things tickets, then CCs me. If there's a question involved back to the requester this can result in 4 to 10 additional e-mails for this one request! The labor hours it's eating up are frightening.
I would love to know how others manage.
Hi Michelle,
Our system is not sophisticated, but it's worked well this past season with some of our comp-heavy resident companies and rentals.
For each production, we create a Google sheet (with a separate tab for each performance), and this sheet is shared between our box office and the relevant parties (producing org, orchestra manager, are some examples). We do set a firm cutoff time for comps to be entered, usually 48 hours in advance of the performance, and normally are able to get everyone to stick to this pretty well.
We also have a policy that printing and reprinting of comp tickets will only be done for the presenter or the person whose name is on the comp list and has been specified to pick up the tickets. Talent as well as donors cannot pickup comp tickets for others unless they have written approval from that party to pickup their tickets for them. Again, there are always exceptions, but having this in place has helped a lot!
Good luck - feel free to email me if you want more details!