Maximising revenue though an experience of a lifetime

From ‘customer control’ to ‘customer choice and delight” Clear Channel Entertainment (CCE) is Europe’s leading producer and marketer of live entertainment events, reaching more than 27 million people each year through approximately 10,000 events and over 70 venues and leisure centres. CCE owns or operates 25 major theatrical venues in Europe, including the Lyceum, Apollo Victoria and Dominion, three of London’s top West End venues.

The challenge for Clear Channel Entertainment UK

CCE’s challenge is to create and deliver an engaging and memorable experience for theatre customers throughout their journey – from arrival to exit – and at the same time maximise potential revenue opportunities. However, customer feedback of the CCE theatre experience outside of the main show identified room for much improvement, with customers perceiving the experience to be dominated by overcrowded bars, overpriced drinks and poor access to facilities. CCE wanted to understand what CCE could do, within the physical constraints of its theatre buildings, to improve this experience and engage its customers to create a greater sense of bond to particular venues.

Moving towards an outstanding (and more profitable) experience

CCE’s UK Managing Director, Catie Callender, appointed CGA to conduct a ‘Customer Experience Audit’ on key CCE theatres. CGA brought a combination of a proven methodology including Heartbeat®, years of senior level retail industry experience, and a track record of making customer insight deliver value for organisations. Catie Callender’s challenge to CGA was to benchmark and improve CCE’s customer proposition whilst identifying opportunities for revenue enhancement in CCE’s retail sales (ie front-of-house, non-ticket sales). Specifically, the ‘Customer Experience Audit’ had 2 quantifiable objectives: 

• increase front-of-house revenue (sales per theatre visitor)
• specific trial recommendations for the Lyceum venue

The starting point for CGA’s work was the creation of an objective ‘baseline’ of CCE’s current customer experience, which resulted in a detailed listing of key experience issues and underlying causes. This was then followed by CGA’s innovative customer experience methodology, Customer HeartbeatTM, in 5 key stages covering: 

Revenue drivers:

CGA analysed CCE’s trading history and conducted fieldwork to build a detailed picture of its revenue drivers and the factors affecting each lever. 

Establishing customer ‘Moments of Truth’:

CGA introduced innovative methods for capturing CCE’s customer interaction as a series of steps in a retail journey, from awareness, arrival, purchasing and consuming, to exit. 

For each step, CGA’s methodology compared and contrasted the value and importance placed by the customer, with the customer’s rating of CCE’s delivery. Eleven ‘Moments of Truth’ (MOTS) emerged the defining moments in the customer interaction that drove the perception and level of trust in CCE. By excelling at these 11 MOTS, CCE had the opportunity to reduce customer ‘pain-points’ such as queuing time and high price perception, delivering an outstanding customer experience and increasing its customer retail sales.

Improvement initiatives:

Working with Catie Callender and her senior team, CGA devised and commercially evaluated a series of initiatives. Each initiative was aimed at driving improvement in one of the 11 MOTs whilst At the same time enhancing revenue. A value assessment matrix was used to highlight where to focus effort and where greatest financial impact could be found. For example, an experience improvement of promotional pricing and increased vending points for mineral water drove both value-for-money and easier ordering for the customer, alongside significantly higher sales revenue for the theatre. 

Communication: 

Catie Callender’s and CGA’s communication challenge was to bring alive the customer experience work in a way that would engage staff, convincing them of the importance of customer experience and that the detailed initiatives would enhance revenue. To make the task of internal communication easier to large and varied teams, CGA synthesised the 11 MOTS into 4 then Experience HeadlinesTM, or themes, around which revenue building activity could be driven. CGA undertook a series of workshops with theatre management and employees, using creative visualisation of the customer experience findings to help bring the work alive. 

Implementation:

The Lyceum venue was chosen for trial implementation of the combined team’s agreed

Clear evidence of success

In the initial trial, a series of ‘quick win’ recommendations were implemented within 2 weeks which led to over 10% increases in front of house sales over the following three months. This success led to CGA being awarded further projects at other CCE venues. Whilst CCE’s relationship with CGA continues, CGA’s work has been able to be rolled out across CCE’s theatre estate by its own management teams.