Customers are a funny bunch, and they can surprise you. That was certainly the experience of Matt Baker, Venues NSW's general manager of members and experience, and his team throughout the four Taylor Swift concerts held recently in Sydney. Between them, the events attracted over 300,000 guests.

When things go wrong, Baker and his team are the first to hear it. But the Taylor Swift event proved the customer's mindset isn’t always predictable. The first of the four concerts, for instance, could have been a CX nightmare after a severe weather event delayed the show. But in fact, the customer satisfaction scores where the same across all four events.

“The first show was a bit crazy because we had a big lightning storm so she was delayed coming on. The pre-act didn't go on and we had to clear the floor for safety. Everyone that was seated on the floor was pushed up into the basement out of harm's way," Baker explains. “On the night, I can tell you we were thinking this is not great. This is not a good experience. My customer experience manager and I, the ones who were going to deal with the brunt of all the feedback, were a bit nervous. But it was actually handled really well. We got lots of high scores for safety. People realised we took it seriously.”

It was a good reminder customers bring their own perceptions to any experience, and often the elements feeding into those experiences are beyond your control. That's especially the case in the world of real things where not everything is a click on a keyboard.

Venues NSW is a State Government Agency managing six key venues: The SCG, Allianz Stadium, CommBank Stadium in Parramatta, Accor Stadium at Homebush, Newcastle Stadium and Woolongong Stadium. Baker's team manages research, the voice of customer programs and complaints handling among other things.

Controlling what you can control

A significant challenge Venues NSW faces is the organisation does not control many of the elements that go to make up a customer's experience of an event, such as ticketing and transport.

“We work heavily with our partners and our event managers on taking those insights, putting them into real-life experiences," Baker says.

The key to success is being able to quickly put feedback into practice. That was evident in the scores for two major events in Newcastle early last year.

“McDonald Jones [Newcastle] hosted its first major concert since the early 1990s when Elton John performed on 8 and 10 January 2023. Arrival and departure to and from the stadium is a key driver of satisfaction in the event experience and was certainly an area we identified for improvement after these first two sell-out shows," Baker says. "We put an amount of work into improving, pick-up and drop-off zones, we increased the number of shuttle buses on key routes, and improved communication to guests before the event for subsequent shows. The experience was much improved for the P!nk shows in February this year.”

Indeed, the Net Promoter Scores (NPS) for arrival by bus (5 to 8.5), car (5.7 to 8.1), ride share (2.9 to 7.7) and train (6.4 to 9) all demonstrated significant improvements.

At a time when there is so much focus on digital touchpoints, Baker makes a point of stressing the overall experience of the customer.

“We tell the team we're dealing with real people in real situations. Just remember our customers are here, we can't make the game - or concert - come back. It only happens once," he says.

The emotional customer journey

This holistic approach involves mapping what Baker calls the "emotional customer journey". 

“We put the measurements there on a timeline. We start off with the purchasing of your ticket, then the transport and arrival, entering the stadium, staff interactions, merchandise, food and beverage, the atmosphere of the event, and then leaving the venue, and the transport home," he explains.

One area where Venues NSW has been able to make a big difference in the overall experience – and where it has been willing to spend money to do so – is at the back end of an event.

“Four years ago, it was really interesting to see people were really excited when they arrived at the venue, we got really high scores for arrival. We worked with our staff on providing great welcomes, smiling, and all those things will be helpful on the entry,” Baker says.

But end of event scores were much lower. "People were not as happy leaving as they were when they arrived, and at sporting events that was true regardless of whether their team won or lost," Baker says.

Previously, Venue NSW's focus had been on managing the roster down during the event as the belief was less people were needed at the end than at the start.

“We did a big flip …and we started bringing people in. Let's keep people on, let's put them on the gates, and make sure they all say ‘thanks for coming’. And customers get that really personal experience," Baker says. The scores went back up.

“It’s now part of our guest service charter as well. We want memorable welcomes and farewells.”

About a year ago, the organisation went live with the Qualtrics platform and now has the ability to be more systematic in its surveys, which Baker acknowledges were previously more ad hoc. “We'd only survey a handful of events, and only the big ones every year.”

As to what's next, Baker would like to build on the successes he's had from what he calls a robust membership system and an excellent CRM built on Microsoft Dynamics.

"We still don't have a single view of the customer, " he says, adding it would also be good to have a more sophisticated approach to its content marketing. "I think that's probably the next step on our journey."