What in the world do ticket buyers worry about before events?

It’s the day before your event and you are running through the lists of everything that needs to happen to make your event a success. Ticket buyers just show up, right? Nah, they’ve got questions too.

Here’s a weird thing: even though Ticketleap is a do-it-yourself platform, we see helping you with customer support as one of our most important duties. Chances are, you’re organizing your event on your own or with a small team, making it hard to find the time and resources to answer even routine questions from ticket buyers. This post outlines some data around this, and offers some helpful tips to maximize the experience of your customers.

Surprisingly, we speak to your ticket buyers 2.5 times more than we talk to you, the event creators! For most buyer calls, we’re able to fully resolve their issue. However, an unfortunately high 30% of the time, we’re stuck passing them right back to you to fully solve their needs. Let’s break this down by type:

• 50% of calls from ticket buyers are about refunds. These calls are tough for us because as much as we want to help out, we don’t process refunds without permission from the event organizer. Two things you should know here. First, if you’d like, we can totally handle refunds for you. Get in touch via help.ticketleap.com and explain your refund policy to us. When buyers call in, we’ll execute that policy accordingly. Second, use our “refund policy” feature to clearly state your rules. Also, provide contact information on your event page. That way, the ticket buyer knows to contact you instead of us, if appropriate, leading to less frustration on their part.

• 10% of calls are requests to resend their tickets. Right before an event, people check their inbox and get a little worried if they don’t spot their tickets right away. We don’t mind sending people a copy of their tickets at anytime, but often, tickets aren’t required to attend the event. If you aren’t asking for tickets but are checking people in through an attendee list instead, putting that information in the event description and emailing them 24 hours before the event with “day of” instructions are both great steps. Lastly, be sure to change your ticket type settings to reservation only:

• 6% of calls are about unrecognized charges on their credit card statement. First, I think we should all be proud of anyone that takes the time to balance their monthly expenses. Second, it’s great to remind people what event they attended and hear how much they enjoyed themselves. We are working on ways to make the event name clearer on credit card statements, but for now, we’re happy to answer these calls.
• 5% of calls stem from email address typos. Buy a ticket. Refresh that inbox. Nothing. For people wondering “why haven’t I got my tickets yet?” the answer is almost always a typo in their email address. — lots of gnail.com. It’s easy to fix and resend the tickets.

We hope this little rundown helps you put yourself in the shoes of your buyers. Anything you can do to make sure they know the right place to go for the right issues, the better their overall ticket buying experience will be for your event.