We all know the feeling; you’ve had a great evening at a restaurant, theatre or event, but the one thing that sticks out is the one thing that wasn’t quite right. Maybe your starter arrived cold or your G&T was tepid? Perhaps a staff member was haughty or you were sat in a draft?
However great an experience is, sometimes even the smallest things can leave a sour taste in your mouth – and unfortunately they’re often what you remember. That’s why your customer experience is so important when you’re designing your own event; making it perfect from start to finish is the only way.
So how do you go about designing a perfect customer experience? We have some tips!
Audience research
Think about the target demographics for your event, and think about the ways that you can tailor the experience to their needs and wants. The best way to do this is by holding focus groups, but you can also use surveys of previous attendees or even just pick the brains of one or two members of your target demographic.
For instance, a young, foodie crowd might love to be served craft beer cocktails at an event in an industrial space; but the same venue and catering might go down like a lead balloon with an older and more conservative demographic. If you want to hire a celebrity, think about the sort of guest your audience will enjoy – someone with a lot of clout amongst your target group.
Walk in their shoes
Go through the motions of your event yourself, see how it works from an attendee’s perspective. You can’t trial run everything – a caterer creating a tasting menu for you will have a lot more time for perfection than one feeding 100 guests, but you can start to get an idea for any areas for improvement.
Try sitting in the seats that your audience will be using; is the view okay? Can you see and hear the stage? Ask your staff to run through some scripts for greeting or answering common queries; you don’t want them to sound like robots, but a little practice can help to polish responses. If your event is running more than once, try to attend as a guest on at least one occasion, to assess the quality of experience as an attendee.
Attention to detail
When you’re looking at your customer’s journey, start it at the very beginning. Is your advertising inclusive, appealing and grammatically sound? Think about the first steps a customer might take, and check out the user experience on your website or buying tickets. Think about things like making booking fees transparent and use e-tickets to streamline the process.
Go beyond the event too, and think about what happens afterwards. An automated email thanking guests for their presence could help to foster goodwill, and if your venue is more remote, providing taxi numbers might be appreciated. By looking at every detail, you can help to ensure the evening is memorable for all of the right reasons.
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