Hi Everyone,
I was wondering if anybody has heard of and would be interested in utilising something like Crowd Engage for their venue?
Crowd Engage if you're not aware is a separate piece of software which for some venues like The Bridge Theatre, and in brief allows them to send their e-tickets on the day of the show straight to a mobile device, as well as add bespoke messaging tailored to the event. They have found it has reduced their box office demand on the day for reprints and a low number of people needing help to locate their tickets at the venue
It is currently not integrated with Tessitura, but is with other CRM platforms. I was wondering if this was something others had investigated? were interested in using themselves? and if Crowd Engage were to integrate in the future with Tessitura would be keen to use it as part of their service offering? Crowd Engage I think are looking to see if the interest is there as to whether it is something they try and pursue.
Would love to hear from you on this prospect.
Best,
James
Hello James et al -
It's been a little while since I responded with a resounding "Yes! We have heard of the interest with Crowd Engage" and commited to reaching out to speak to them regarding integration possibilities. The world has changed a lot since February - who would have ever guessed! While it might have taken us a bit longer to have the conversation with the current pandemic, it did finally happen.
I (and others) had a lovely chat with Hugh, the one-man creator, developer, marketer, and support band that is behind Crowd Engage and thought both he and his product were quite impressive and something that we definitely want to keep our eye on moving forward! For the current state of being, both sides agreed that Crowd Engage was not quite ready to hit our full ecosystem and integration world as a partner. However, as I said, we liked what we saw with the product and have no hesitations around Hugh and Crowd Engage working directly with our members to integrate using our API. Hugh seemed to be excited about exploring this with some of our members, so I would encourage those interested to continue the conversation with him.We'd love to see this become a mature product with on-going development resources and robust support which we can then potentially offer to our 700+ members without flooding current capacity. Please feel free to drop me a line (or respond here) and let me know if anyone proceeds forward with a relationship with Crowd Engage as we'd love to keep our fingers on this pulse.
Hope you are all safe and healthy in what feels like week 287592 of this pandemic.
Cheers,
Heather
Hi Heather,
Thank you very much for coming back to us on this. I can imagine there is a lot going on for you so thanks for making the time to speak with Hugh.
We are still very interested in CrowdEngage. But I think without knowing if it is something that could working as full integration with Tessitura and the possible impact and costs that might come with it, we'd be hesitant to commit, particularly in the current climate. So it might be worth a further discussion further down the line when we and perhaps other venues are in a position to focus and give this the time it needs? (Our current thinking is to move to e-tickets as potentially our only ticketing dispatch method and going cashless - so functionality like this would be very attractive with that in mind).
I shall be keeping in contact with Hugh as I think it is a good product and perhaps if a group of venues were keen to work together to integrate and share the workload and cost perhaps that would be something we would be able to consider a bit further down the line. Would that be a possible option do you know Heather?
If anybody else has thoughts please do reach out or add to the discussion.
Thanks again,
Hi James -
I was really happy to talk to Hugh, and like I said, I think he has a product that is worth keeping an eye on. I would love to be able to eventually officially offer it to our community once it was ready to take on our full community from a business model perspective.
In speaking to Hugh at Crowd Engage, it sounded like an integration with Tessitura would mostly be on Hugh's side using our API and not a huge lift or cost for any member to take on - more of a sponsorship and hand holding into the network. I'd imagine if an organization had some savvier API users that could help Hugh navigate through the API, that might be all that he'd need. I could be wrong about that, so take that with a grain of salt, but that was the impression I got from talking to him.
It's a bit chicken and egg when it comes to our ecosystem and official partners, I realize this. If someone has a product and the support that our members are happy with, then that leads to more leverage for them to be a part of the ecosystem, and yet how do they get that maturity and growth without Tessitura's official stamp of approval? Since we serve over 700 organizations in 10 countries, we do try to hold partners to certain standards of development, support and operational stability. While I might, as a member, be much more willing to throw in with a one-shop person that I felt good about (full disclosure, I totally did this as a member), as product owner I am beholden to you as a member to make sure the choices we support and stamp are the best for the community at large. There's a bit of industry stamina that we expect and I really sincerely hope we see that from Crowd Engage. So the door is definitely not closed on the conversation by any means.
Hope that helps clarify and perhaps spur some innovation and relations out there in the member pool!