Renovation created challenges to standard operating procedures
After inspection, New Victory Theater discovered that the auditorium’s historic plaster was not as secure as necessary, the New 42 team had to move out of its space to do emergency repairs.
Their summer program was moved to a black box space two doors down, and they were forced to find an alternate venue for their main programming for the following three-month period. That temporary location, while still on 42nd street, was a 7-10 minute walk, three blocks further west. In New York that can feel like going 3 miles, like you’re almost leaving Midtown.
“I just had all of these visions of patrons, along with their children, bustling to get to the theater… Then showing up at the doors to find out that they had another 15 minutes to go, which negatively impacts the mindset to have a nice theater experience, it’s not good for the patron overall. There’s technology out there that can help us with awareness, and help make things better for our staff and patrons.” Jamie O’Brien, Associate Director of Digital Services, New 42
To add to the additional steps required to attend the show, the New 42 team faced another challenge. With youth-oriented content, many pre-show activities come with the New Victory Theater experience. Jamie described, “You buy the ticket for the show, but if you come early, you could spend 15-30 minutes doing activities with your kids in our lobby spaces. From our post show survey mechanism, we know that everyone’s like, ‘these activities were amazing. I just wish you told us about them.’ So we knew we had the capacity to address the information problem that the pre-show emails themselves weren’t solving it. I really wanted to place an interrupter in front of people.”
Patron advocates opt for mobile patron engagement technology to lift visitor experience
“At the Tessitura Learning and Community Conference (TLCC), I was looking for integrated mobile texting visitor experience solutions and met the Activity Stream team behind crowdEngage,” Jamie mentioned. It was very important to the New 42 team that the solution fully integrated with Tessitura. It was going to be key to use automations, especially when performances are primarily on the weekend. And the admin staff are usually the people who wire up all the technology and keep it running.
“I was like, so you know how we have a wish list of customer service enhancements? If we do the solution for this one thing, crowdEngage will hit about five other things on our wish list, like Apple wallet capabilities, the concession sales, pre-sales, FAQs, all of that. I knew once we do this, we won’t ever go back.” Jamie O’Brien, Associate Director of Digital Services, New 42
Enhanced Visitor Communication and Satisfaction for New Victory Theater visitors
To address the renovation project, crowdEngage helped the New 42 team communicate with visitors along key steps on finding the location changes and temporary main stage located a few blocks away. “We really enjoy the text reminders and ticket links. They make it super easy to navigate kids and transit and get to the theater,” a New Victory Theater parent patron shared.
Beyond the renovation, the New 42 team has found a long-term tool for helping customers get into the New Victory Theater and other programming. With all they have to manage, sometimes no news is good news when it comes to a new software implementation: “Everyone is very excited and has been a big fan so far, I think we don’t hear a lot about it in our post show feedback, which is a little surprising to me. I’ve heard effectively no complaints from staff, which was not the case about the other version of mobile tickets previously used.”
“When you’re hitting that crowdEngage screen when you’re coming off of 42nd street and you’re in a 72 square foot lobby space with 500 other people trying to shuffle in, it’s a quicker experience. They can have it ready before they get off the train or out of the taxi or, you know, leaving the parking garage kind of thing, without it expiring or logging you out. It’s simply right there on your phone as you enter. So it’s been a win.” Jamie O’Brien, Associate Director of Digital Services, New 42
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To learn more about New 42 and upcoming programming at New Victory Theater visit their website.
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