Industry News

What does the future hold for ticketing and LiveChat?

The entertainment and ticketing industry is falling behind other sectors in terms of customer satisfaction in 2017, according to a survey from online chat solutions leader, LiveChat.

The company has released its annual survey of over 21,000 companies representing 22 industries using live chat and tickets for customer service and sales.

All in all, it analysed data from 32 billion website visits, 334 million chats and 17 million tickets.

TheTicketingBusiness looked at how ticketing and live events fared in the survey and what the future holds for this useful online service tool…

LIVECHAT IN ENTERTAINMENT

Entertainment grades poorly when compared against most sectors with its overall customer satisfaction on LiveChat measured at 83.57 per cent.

It is outperformed by key sectors such as Software (90.69% satisfaction rating), Education, Media and Retail, although some way clear of the lowest-ranking, Travel, at 75.94%. See table below.

“It’s not clear whether these statistics reveal a weakness in the Entertainment sector’s LiveChat offer or, perhaps more realistically, reflect the fact that many customer service issues in ticketing cannot be resolved over LiveChat,” said Ian Nuttall, founder, TheTicketingBusiness Forum.

“For example, if refunds are not available then customers are unlikely to score the chat highly even if the issue was resolved efficiently.

“It’s clear though that the Entertainment sector needs to evolve its LiveChat offer and the sheer volume of chats generated through sports and entertainment ticketing outpaces those of almost all other sectors. With an average of one in four purchases generating a customer service issue, ticket-buyers need efficient customer service channels – and LiveChat is one of the most effective currently available.”

OVERALL FINDINGS

Across all markets, live chat grew by 8.29 per cent even though customer satisfaction saw a downturn in 2017 of 2.81 per cent to 83.54 per cent.

Technology companies had the highest customer satisfaction, while small business struggled to keep up with the live chat demand.

OUTLOOK

Live Chat’s key recommendations from the 2018 Report include:

TAKE YOUR TIME: Try to solve the case in one touch, no matter the handling time. As illustrated from the results of the tech companies, which have the happiest customers, handle time doesn’t matter if you solve the case in one go.

HIRE FOR PEAKS: Sometimes companies face the increase in chats towards the end of the year. If that’s the case in your industry, consider seasonal hiring.

BE CONSISTENT: It’s not easy to have the same performance throughout the whole year. But with the right planning and organising, it’s completely possible

SMALL NEEDS TO BE BEAUTIFUL: Always have somebody on chat during working hours and try to have a quick first response time. After working hours, you can set up an offline form which customers can use to ask questions. There’s also the option to have somebody from your company check LiveChat once in a while to keep the communication flow. You can also try BotEngine to build a chat bot that answers the most popular questions for you.

Readers can access the full report here.

Images: LiveChat