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The VIP TreatmentThe VIP Treatment

This guy asks “What would VIP service in Economy Class Look Like?” His premise was interesting:

  • Segment your audience via optional fees, so that people can pay for the services they want
  • But still treat everyone great, no matter what they’ve paid you

I think we could be doing a better job of this in the theatre. Don’t get my wrong: customers are already paying plenty of fees on top of the price of the ticket. But they’re for boring (and un-motivating) things like building maintenance or ticket-handling.

So what are the “value-added services” audiences might be willing to pay for?

Parking

Right now, we either leave patrons on their own to find parking, or bury the “cost” of parking in with a subscription package. Tom Vanderbilt spoke at Yale yesterday about traffic-related policy, and had some interesting things to say: price parking spots such that 15% are always empty. We’ve talked a lot about queuing theory in class, where excess capacity in the system reduces wait times. But it’s never occurred to me to manage our severe New Haven parking shortage in this way.

Line Jumping

There are times I just know I’m going to be cutting it awfully close to curtain before i can pick up my tickets at the Box Office. Other times, I abhor wasting my time in lines. In both cases, I would be willing to pay a little something extra to be able to jump the line and know that I can show up with only moments to spare and still breeze into the theatre. There is some definite room for experimentation here about how the offer is presented to consumers (5% of ticket price? $2? $20 for the year?), and what makes economical sense for the theatre (# patrons x $fee > %$ box office salary). Utilizing the queuing theory from above is key to this one too. Don’t forget those bar lines at intermission too.

Checking Bags/Coats

This isn’t a brilliantly new idea, but when’s the last time you experimented with how much you were charging for coat/bag check? We stopped offering this as a service years ago, but I’m wondering if with a little re-thinking, we could figure out how to price this option for the folks that actually want it. Maybe it’s just because my purse is enormous and carries the equivalent of an electronics store and half of a library inside, but I’d be happy to pay $3 and know that I have the space under my seat for my legs.

Upgrading Seats

When I check in at the airport, I am invariably offered to upgrade my seat. The last time I flew, I chose to lay down the extra $50 for an “Economy Plus” seat on Virgin America. It included all the free food, drinks (of the alcoholic sort even!), and premium movies I wanted. 5 hours later, I was a believer. The next time I show up to a theatre where I paid for the cheap seats in the back, I’d like to be able to have the option to pay to move forward. I know I could be sneaky, and wait till lights out, and the ushers have left the room, but I like to be all settled in when the curtain rises.

While we’re at it, why hasn’t anyone expanded the legroom in the first few aisles of the theatre? Or wherever you’ve chosen to place your “first-class” seating.

Re-thinking General Admission

I get it, printing tickets for every seat in your (usually small) theatre is too much of a headache. You use those little retro “Admit One” tickets and can’t tie an individual to a seat. You don’t have a ticketing database, you have a sign up sheet with a guy at a table outside your front door. So riddle me this: why not sell 2 different tickets at 2 different prices. One’s colored green, costs $5 more, and the holder get to walk in to the theatre 10 minutes before everybody else. Even if only 5 people in your audience of 50 takes you up on the offer, it’s cost you virtually nothing.

Re-vamping Loyalty Programs

We all know the trend: subscriptions are down, single tickets (as a % of total anyway) are rising. So what if you could reward your “loyal” single ticket buyers via airline-mile like points? These would carry across any kind of purchases I make at your theatre–merchandise, concessions, tickets, etc–and across years. I could redeem these points for small things, like a drink during intermission, or big things, like a free ticket to bring a friend. Incentivize the actions you want your consumers to take.

There are some pretty cool, new ticketing programs on the horizon. But this goes beyond just changing prices, and instead changes the way we think about pricing for what we offer. Maybe we should unbundle all those services we offer to subscribers. Maybe we should make those same services available to single ticket buyers, for the right price. Maybe we should invent new services that patrons are waiting for the opportunity to pay for. Maybe we should stop offering services that are losing us money.

And then there are the free things, like actual, genuine smiles.

Ushers are usually the very first people I see at your theatre. On a performancy-by-performance basis, they’re the folks I interact with the most. They’re also probably your least trained staff/volunteers. More often than not, they can’t actually help me find my seat because they don’t know where it is. Or they totally ignore me. In the world of retail, there are clear “winners” in the customer service brand reputation: companies like Zappos and Trader Joe’s who put the customer experience at the center of what they do. We expect our patrons to sit patiently through a lot of great, but sometimes not so great, theatre. Shouldn’t they be able to expect more from us?

So which theatres are doing cool things along these ideas?

January 20th, 2010 | Tags: , , | Category: Deep Thought

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  • Zac

    I think a lot of things you have mentioned are already in place, part of making the entire visit pleasing for patrons.

    A coatcheck isn't usually a concern in Florida, but we do hold peoples bags, and even will refridgerate their to-go boxes if they've visited a resturant before curtain.

    We quietly do a paron loyalty thing, as described above, sending out special offers as a reward or to bolster ticket sales (BOGO offers, free admission to previews, etc.) These people already love your theatre and are probably out there advocating for you every day, so this gives them a chance to bring that friend they rave about your shows to into the experience, and a great audience building tool.

    A lot of these things we do anyway, parking is a continued concert in our urban setting, and instead of up-pricing parking, we have negotiated a deal to make it very accessable to our patrons.

    For smaller houses without tiered seating, upgrades aren't always possible. We have a very loyal patron base and actually have multiple widths of seats (to accomodate for a curve in the auditorium we inherited them from) and if its someone we know is larger, we try to make sure we get them in the most comfortable seat for them in the first place. Also since we're a smaller house, we built ample legroom in when constructing our spaces when we built the theatre (48″ seatback to seatback!!!)

    We're not big on fees, but do have a tip jar for donations at our concessions that usually gets some action, whether or not people are drinking. Maybe fees aren't the way to go?

  • devonvsmith

    The fee for service idea is very much about generating revenue in a different way. We have for a long time thought about the patron's experience as a bundled package (ie, the cost of your ticket includes all of these services above). This can be problematic because it: A) Hides the true cost of each service to the consumer (so they typically undervalue it), B) Spreads the true cost of that service across all consumers, some of who may not want the service, and C) Hides the consumer's value of the service to the organization. Implementing fees creates a market equilibrium between those who value the service at a certain price, and those willing to offer the service at a certain cost. So, in a (very) simplified world, if I'm Asolo, and I offer, but don't charge, for coat check, it may take years for me to stop offering the service, even though it's costing me money to have a guy stand by a closet waiting to take coats. What I propose instead is to offer the service, but to price it accordingly.

    Why so secretive about loyalty program? I would want to broadcast to the world that I value my loyal patrons so much that I do cool things for them. Why under-price parking? And there can be totally legitimate reasons (customer service reputation, competitive advantage over another urban theatre, etc). If that's the case, there are some very cool studies about price as a signal for quality. So if you've negotiated a below-market rate for parking for your customers, print the “real” price on that parking ticket, even though you're charging them less, and they will value the service more. So when you can't increase revenues, at least you can increase reputation.

    It's hard to imagine a theatre with perfectly equal seating throughout the entire house. I've worked in everything from a 50 seat theatre in Seattle, to a 400 seat theatre in Louisville to a 1200 seat theatre in NYC. In all, there have been some seats that some audience members would be perfectly willing to pay more money for, if only you asked them. But you'd never know until you tried.

    I guess in sum my proposition is that looking at how you price your product (by amount, and by structure) can lead to some interesting discoveries, and possibly to increased earned rev. The other side of this coin is to think about what services your customers really want, that you're not yet providing them. And the only way to know *that,* is to ask them…or to listen to them tweet :)

  • rachel with the stapler

    hey,
    I think all of these are great ideas. I've been thinking about a real loyalty program that people would actually value for several years now. Also…would love any good articles about Zappos and Trader Joes that you think would benefit the HMs or ushers. I've looking for something easy and fast to read for them to incorporate into the training.