After an intensive RFP process, the Lesher Center for the Arts selected the accesso box office ticketing system for its robust online functionality, customizable set-up and ease of use. The ability to offer season package renewals online was key to their decision: “Individual renewal notices are really critical to our structures. With Accesso, we can let patrons log into their account and renew directly as opposed to it being so laborious, paper-heavy and mail-heavy,” said Egg. The Center also appreciates the solution’s “Hold” functionality, which lets patrons save their seats without charging their credit card immediately and has helped to keep costs down.

With the accesso system, the Center has also been able to launch an online Producer Portal, allowing their promoters seamless access to real-time reporting metrics. “Before Accesso, we didn’t have a producer portal so that was exciting to roll out and it also let us take those reporting tasks away from a full-time employee,” Egg added.

Having the ability to offer a patron-friendly and consistently branded online environment was also important to the Lesher Center. With the accesso solution’s highly customizable and intuitive templates, the Center has expanded their event pages and been able to grow their online channel sales by 29%. “When we moved to the Accesso box office ticketing system, having direct access to the web event landing page experience and all of the different places we could customize information was really great. We were able to really take control over that – and it was a pretty quick learning curve," said Egg.

Since implementing the accesso ticketing system, the Lesher Center has found that the amount of time it takes to train new agents has dropped tremendously, because it is so easy to use. Some of the features that help expedite this process include visual indicators during the Exchange process and a variety of ways to easily search the system (such as by order number or patron ID). The latter has proven especially helpful with the Center’s need for precise accounting: “Every day with our end of day work, we double-check to make sure exchanges have been fully closed,” said Courtney Egg, “If there’s an open transaction the agent forgot to finish, there are a lot of measures to double-check these transactional loops to make sure our reports are accurate.”

As the Lesher Center has refined and grown their procedures, they continue to work closely with their Client Services Manager to develop custom enhancements that will drive further efficiencies. In the past few years, they have developed 59 enhancements together, with Exchange payment customizations and reporting enhancements being the most notable. They look forward to what the future holds with accesso.

“Our Client Services Manager has a running list of things we are refining,” said Egg, “and I think the next milestone will be enhancements that help remove even more human errors in reporting.”

“We meet regularly, and I always feel heard,” added Vierling, “Even if something is not actionable immediately, I know the team will be receptive. Our Client Services Manager keeps track of our needs better than we do!” he said.