Good morning,
My name is Linda Bowlen. I am the Director of Ticketing for the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert, CA. We are new to Tessitura and are in our discovery/set up stage. I am getting ready to set up our modes of sale and wanted to reach out for some advise. The obvious choices would be Internet, Phone, Walk Up/Window Sales but we also have a group of high donors that get special privileges that place their order at the beginning of the season via a mail order or faxed form. How do you characterize those? We could use Mail I guess, but was wondering what other options you have used that prove helpful? Our current system is very convoluted and I want to make everything is Tessitura as easy and clear as I can from the get go. I would appreciate your suggestions. Thank you in advance.
LB
Hi Linda. I think it depends on what you're looking to have your high donors be able to do. Is it early access only, is it a waiving of fees, etc.? Would they be able to do these on their own online as well, or do they have to be done by someone in your office?A separate mode of sale beyond what the three you list is probably the easiest solution, since you can customize that path for fees, price types, etc. For what it's worth, our box office also uses a Back Office mode of sale that is used only by managers. That gives access to a variety of price types that general staff may not have, and also is one we use for no fees. We also use it for a lot of testing before general public/staff have access to it. Happy to have a conversation about this further if you'd like. I remember what it was like getting set-up, and there will definitely be questions.
Best,
Jess
Some of the MOS's that we have (in addition to the ones you listed) include one Presale one for each level of our memberships (since they get different presale access times), and also Exchange, Group Sales, In House, Testing and Door Sales (only used for sales during the hour before each event that the Box Office sells tickets for that event).
Diana this is SO helpful. I had MOS in my mind/my understanding as the HOW they purchased. In our current system we also have membership levels that purchase on a presale at different access times, but we have to set up a special multi step promotion and create a ticket type for each one. I did not realize MOS could be set up for those. Would you mind if I sent you a message inquiring a little more about how you handle the presale?
Hi Jess! Thank you for your feedback. I have so very much to learn about the wonderful ways Tessitura will be an asset to us. I appreciate the offer of the extended conversation and I will be in touch soon.
Linda
I don't know all the ins and outs of the setup - as it was already in place when I started. I do know that when we build events, we set the start time for the MOS for each of the member presale levels as the date/time that that membership level will have access.
We also set up a source code for each membership presale level for that presale - which is part of the link that we send the members in order for them to get access during the presale.
Each of our presale levels has an entry in TR_WEB_RANKING. (Here's the info about TR_WEB_RANKING: https://www.tessituranetwork.com/Help_System/Content/System_Tables/TR_WEB_RANKING.htm)
Just before the presale starts, we go in to that system table and click the correct ranking for that presale (and unclick the previous one).
When the member clicks on the link in the presale announcement email, and then they log in to their account in TNEW, it checks their ranking and determines if they are eligible for that presale and, I believe, switches to that MOS rather than the Online MOS. For phone sales, agents would need to enter the correct presale source code and the correct MOS in order to access the events that are part of the presale.
Hopefully that helps! And, as I said, there may be more setup details that I am not aware of, since they were there before me. These are the portions that I deal with regularly.
Even though we aren't a performing arts center, we have the same situations with larger donors. We have a MOS that we titled "Back Office" that covers anything done directly by upper office staff. It's different from phone sales because that is used if someone calls to sign up for a program or whatever (which our front desk usually takes).
Basically for us the distinction is anything that can be sold by Front Desk or by TNEW (so for us: general admission, classes, lectures, etc.) does not get the Back Office designation.