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NOTE: General Director Brian Dickie is still on holiday--so here I am again!
Chicago Opera Theater is getting a new ticketing/fundraising database system called Tessitura--we are the first sub-licensee of the Harris Theater who got the system earlier this year.
What is Tessitura and why would the layman care?
1st question--Tessiutra was created by the brilliant folks at the Met because there was no ticketing system out there that was really made for the arts--arts groups mostly adopted systems that were for sporting events, and try to make them work. Also, an integrated box office and fundraising system was almost unheard of…So, thankfully, the Met created one a while back and it has taken off like wildfire and now hundreds of arts companies from all over the world use Tessitura.
Why does the layman care? Bottom-line it's better customer service--extreme customer service. We know instantly if the person we are talking to is a VIP (although we here at COT treat all of our customers like VIPs!), their preferred payment method, who they buy tickets with, the last show they went to…and, all of this helps to assist our customers more efficiently. We can also market to them more efficiently, a la amazon.com: "you went to Akhnaten, so you might like Nixon in China".
It's by no means a perfect system--there isn't one out there. But it comes pretty close, and we here are very excited about it!
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NOTE: Some of us at COT will be filling in for General Director Brian Dickie while he enjoys a well-deserved holiday.
As Marketing Director for Chicago Opera Theater I have two big challenges: 1) getting opera/classical music lovers to "get" us, and 2) to get theatre lovers to "try" us.
First point -- there are many, many people who "get" us -- they love our unique and rarely- heard-in-Chicago repertoire, they love the contemporary twist on many of our productions, and they love our young singers and international talent.
But, quite frankly, there are so many people out there who LOVE classical music, but haven't been to COT. (And I don't mean the people who come and HATE it -- they are never coming back, and that's fine. We aren't for everybody.) But there 30-50K people who go to the Lyric and CSO in a season (a very rough guesstimate -- it's probably higher) and maybe 3K walk through our doors in a season. It drives me crazy! How do you get classical music/opera lovers to take the leap and try us out?
Second point -- I have some friends and colleagues in the theatre world (that's my background), and conversations with them go something like this:
Them: "I couldn't possibly come to a production at Chicago Opera Theater."
Me: "Why not?"
Them: "Well…because it's opera." (insert them laughing uproariously at their own cleverness)
Now, the few friends who I was able to convince to come to COT in the last couple of years were really blown away by our productions, even though they arrived kicking and screaming. Again, the challenge for me is how to get people who love theatre, but (think) they hate opera in that door the first time?
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