The Festival staff contacted us in 2020 to manage sales during the year of the pandemic: that year a leaner version of the Festivaletteratura was organized, with particular attention to capacity, due to the mandatory social distancing. Starting from 2020 we are the official ticketing system of the Festival.
The sale is opened by groups of users, the first sale is dedicated only to members and the second step is dedicated to the general public. The event is so long-awaited that often, for the most well-known appointments, it reaches the sale dedicated to the general public with certain events already sold out, and the average user’s cart is very large, with even more than 10 events. To manage this type of big sale, like concerts with important artists, it is necessary to use a system capable of issuing a high quantity of tickets and fiscal seals per minute, just like ours.
For the Festival we have created a private label for online sales, with the look & feel of the event website. On the private label, there is a calendar with the event’s date: by selecting one of the dates, it is possible to see the list of events on that specific day.
To manage the first phase of sales, dedicated to members, we import some whitelists that the organizer gives us, on the whitelists we can find the card member’s numbers.
During the purchase process, the customers can insert their card member numbers to validate and complete the order. During these years, the process has been implemented to allow two card numbers to be entered, making it possible for a single user to buy both for himself and for a family member or a friend.
The first big “obstacle” with this event was to make the purchasing process as simple as possible, in its complexity, considering the fact that the public is not too accustomed to the use of technology and that medium-carts are very big. All these variables have made it necessary to create a simplified purchasing process, which has been perfected over the years of collaboration, which requires the customers to enter the essential data and which makes adding events to the cart quick, in order to not exceed the times for payment. For this reason, for example, we open a pre-registration for accounts or credit cards in the weeks before the opening of sales.
For on-site sales, the Festival has decided to rent box office workstations, with certified Boca printers and PC but also to expose in some areas of the city QR codes to access the private label and staff trained by our assistance, to help customers complete online purchases.
Our staff is always present on-site at the beginning of the members’ sale, to monitor and provide the necessary assistance. Festivaletteratura also rents out professional Zebra readers for access control equipped with a SIM with our application installed, capable of validating 600-800 codes per hour.
For Festivaletteratura we also carry out an important reporting system, always punctual and accurate, and customer service, on the organizer side (to modify performances, send massive communications to customers, etc.) and on the final customer’s side, supporting them in the purchasing phases, and in the post-purchase for any requests.