Accessible seating and concession enquiry chat assistant
Problem
A supporter trying to book an accessible seat, or check whether a concession rate applies to a dependent, usually has one question that a web form cannot answer and no phone line open to ask it outside ticket office hours. They start the online application, reach the field asking for a companion seat or a concession category, and stop rather than guess. The half-finished application sits in the ticketing platform with nobody assigned to follow it up. Staff who do pick up the phone the next day answer from memory, so two supporters calling about the same policy can get two different answers, and neither answer is written down anywhere a colleague could check.
Product idea
A chat assistant embedded on the seating and membership pages that answers questions about accessible seating categories, companion tickets and concession eligibility from a policy document the ticketing team maintains, available at any hour. When a question needs a person, for example a specific access requirement the policy does not cover, it captures the requirement in structured form (seat area, access need, concession category, contact details) and adds it to a queue the box office supervisor works the next morning, rather than leaving an abandoned form. It does not hold or allocate a seat and does not take payment; both stay in the existing ticketing platform once a staff member has reviewed the request.
Who it is for
Box office supervisors and supporter services agents who work the resulting queue, and the membership manager who owns the accessibility and concession policy content the assistant answers from.
Possible first version
A chat widget on the seating and membership pages, answering from a policy document the team writes and maintains covering accessibility categories, companion seats and concession eligibility. Unanswered questions and access requests are captured as structured records, shown in a queue for the box office supervisor with a way to mark each as resolved. No live seat inventory check and no payment capture in version one: the assistant tells the supporter a staff member will confirm availability and complete the booking. There is no integration with the ticketing platform in version one; the supervisor completes the booking there directly.
- Build classification
- Workflow application
- Rough effort
- 4-6 week first release
- Roles involved
- Box office supervisor, Supporter services agent, Membership manager
- Relevant to
- Professional club, Venue & stadium operator, Women's league, Collegiate athletics
- Systems in play
- Ticketing and access control platforms, CRM, Telephony and contact centre tools
- Product framing
- Voice or chat interface
Questions we get asked
What happens if someone asks about an access requirement the policy document does not cover?
The assistant says plainly that it does not have an answer and asks for the detail needed to check: the specific access need, the area of interest, and how to reach the supporter. That goes into the queue as a flagged item rather than a guess. Accessibility requirements vary enough between individuals that inventing an answer is worse than admitting the gap, and the policy document is meant to grow from exactly these flagged questions, not the other way round.
Does this replace the accessibility phone line we already advertise?
No. Keep the accessibility phone line, because some supporters will always prefer to speak to someone, and some access needs are hard to describe in a chat box. This sits alongside it for the hours the line is not staffed and for supporters who would rather type. If the phone line and the chat assistant give different answers to the same policy question, that is a sign the underlying policy document needs fixing, not a reason to remove either channel.
Who has to keep the policy content up to date?
The membership manager, in practice, because the assistant is only as good as the policy document behind it. When a seating category changes or a concession rule is updated, someone has to update that document, and if nobody does, the assistant keeps giving an answer that used to be right. Budget a short review of the content each season, not just at launch.
What if a supporter needs their seat confirmed that same night, not the next morning?
It tells the supporter plainly that nobody can confirm seat availability until the box office reopens, and offers a fixed callback window rather than a promise it cannot keep. Starting a chat at midnight reserves nothing, because version one does not touch the seat inventory. For a supporter who needs same-night confirmation, this tool will not get them one; what it can do is capture the request properly so the first person in the office the next morning is not starting from a blank form.
Is this your workflow?
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