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Phone payments

Brendan Douglas
$organization

Hello community!

I wish to be a bit nosy and ask a few questions about phone lines if I may?  A potential review of ours might be on the cards and I wanted to put the feelers out (another phrase I now use on my journey to becoming my father) to see what the standard practice is for other members of the community:

  1. Does your organisation currently operate a telephone line for ticket bookings and payments as standard?
  2. If you do, has it still been operational during the lock down?
  3. Do you see yourself continuing to offering a telephone line for ticket bookings in the short term (next five years) and long term (beyond five years)?

Any time you could give to answer these questions would me much appreciated.

See you on the 17th!

Many thanks

Brendan :-) 

  • 0 $organization

    Hi Brendan,

    1. Yes. Up until our closure last year, we offered a telephone Box Office, 11am-6pm, Monday to Friday, plus Saturdays at certain times of the year.
    2. No. Emails and callbacks where required.
    3. Yes, I'm not currently expecting this to change significantly, beyond perhaps reviewing telephone hours, if desired.

  • 0 $organization
    Hi Brendan
     
    Here at The Old Vic we offered phone bookings as well as online and in person up until we had to close last year. We’ve been online only ever since. We’ve had a single phone line for customer service issues that couldn’t be resolved any other way but we’ve encouraged everyone to communicate by email.
     
    I am not sure I see a future where we don’t offer any kind of phone service but I imagine it’ll be a customer service line and we will expect all bookings to be made online. There’s also the possibility of web chat so if people have minor problems or questions while in the purchase pathway someone could chat to them in real time.
     
    Kind regards
     
    Ian
     
    Ian Bass​
    Box Office Manager
    The Old Vic
    The Cut, London SE1 8NB
    T +44 (0)844 871 7628
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  • 0 $organization

    Hi Brendan,

    1. No, Sadler's Wells does not offer an inbound phoneline for bookings or customer service at this time. All requests and queries come through email and where a phone call is necessary, a member of the team will call out to the customer.

    2. N/A

    3. We will likely offer a reduced timeframe for inbound phonecalls when we go on sale with shows selling at full capacity later in the year, tbc at this time. For socially distanced shows going on sale soon and for the next few months at least we will continue with just emails and callbacks where required as well.

    See you on the 17th and have a good weekend.

    James

  • 0 $organization

    Hi Brendon!

    Hope all is well with you.

    1) Not currently - but before lockdown our phone room was open 10-7pm show days, 10-6pm dark days Monday-Saturday and 4hours before performance on Sundays.

    2) No - since lockdown we've had online sales only, with customer queries (not payments) via email. 

    3) Yes, we will offer a phone line but will be encouraging online sales in the most-part, with phone line for more complex customer queries or for accessibility for those not online. We're currently reviewing opening times. We too are planning on using web-chat functions, procurement for this underway.

    best wishes, 

    Liz

  • 0 $organization

    Hi Brendan,

    1. Yep during pre-covid we operated a phone line 12-7 on show days and 12-5 on dark days (closed on Sunday/BHs).

    2. Yep we managed to divert our phones to remote working so have had a skeleton crew manning box office phones 12-5 Mon - Fri since last March.

    3. Our bookings are moving towards more and more online but we still have a sizeable amount of phone bookings (30-35%) so will be maintaining a phone service for the foreseeable future!

    Thanks,

    Dave

    Abbey Theatre, Dublin.

  • 0 $organization

    Morning Brendan,

    1. We have always operated a telephone line at Sage Gateshead.

    2. We had about 5 months of outbound calls only to respond to any emails we couldn't action without speaking to customers in order to mitigate the affects of staff shortages during periods of furlough, followed by a short period of time physically at the venue selling tickets as per usual and since mid-November (I think) we have had all incoming calls to our usual Box Office number diverted to our staff via Teams whilst working from home.

    3. Due to the nature of our audience it is likely that we will always require the ability to take bookings over the phone.

  • 0 $organization

    Thanks so much everyone for taking the time to let me know.  This is really valuable, and much appreciated.