Hi!
We have a World Music series that runs every Friday night in a little hall and we've just set them up using remote access to be able to sell door tickets there. So currently, they have a laptop which connects (I believe it's via VPN) to a remote desktop with Tessitura, where they sell tickets that print out of a BOCA attached to the laptop.
The problem seems to be the speed with which all this is happening. The concerts are only about $25, so people view this more as a movie ticket - something you buy quickly - but the process seems to be rather slow. In one case, the performance started 15 minutes late, because it was taking that long to process everybody's ticket and get them through the door.
As far as I can tell from the team, there are a couple of issues:
1) The speed of the connection - it can take up to a minute sometimes when they've sent something to print for it to come out of the printer.
2) The number of steps to go through (and this is with them selling tickets to the one generic constituent).
It seems to be an issue of using Tessitura (which is designed for the longer, more particular, selling of allocated concert tickets) for selling quick, general admission tickets. Has anyone else had these issues? If so, what do you do to make the process as quick and efficient as possible?
It sounds like the technical issue is your most pressing so I would certainly work to mitigate that however possible. Perhaps you could try installing Tessitura directly on your laptop and launching it after you VPN in - that might speed up your printing since the signal would take a more direct route to the ticket printer. I would also check out the connection speed and how you're connecting (wireless vs wired) to see if there are any improvements that could be made.
Once you've gotten a handle on the technical side, you'll want to work with your rep on best practices in selling tickets quickly. This is a subject near and dear to our hearts at the museum since we often have large walk-up crowds that we need to get in the doors efficiently. Is your rep using the best seat button rather than going to the seat map? Do you utilize keyboard shortcuts whenever possible (there's a list of them in Tessitura's help system but some favorites of mine are Alt-B to best seat and Ctrl-P to pay). If you'd like any more hints on selling quickly let me know.
Best of luck!