TL;DR: My team mapped customer journeys and found dozens of opportunities to help Eventbrite customers access their tickets. Our work elevated a long-overlooked customer pain point to a top-five business priority and helped thousands of people access their tickets.
The challenge
Eventbrite is an events marketplace that serves 89 million monthly active users across 180 countries. My team designed experiences for event organizers and attendees who need help. We empower customers to find a solution to their problem and connect them to human support when they need it. In 2023, we devised an end-to-end strategy for the business’s biggest problem: lost tickets.
The data
- In 2023, 94 million people ordered 300 million tickets on Eventbrite.
- Roughly 4 percent of those ticket buyers viewed the “Find your tickets” article on the Help Center.
- Among article viewers, roughly 11 percent clicked thru to contact support.
- The article page views suggest millions of customers are looking for their tickets, and roughly 440k need more help after reading the support article. Yikes.
The pain is real: countless customers show up to events, realize they can’t find their tickets, frantically search for help, and ultimately give up–missing out on the comedy show, music festival, or other live experience they paid to attend.
One customer summed up the problem: “This whole experience has turned me off buying tickets off [Eventbrite].”
The opportunity
I was curious to explore the end-to-end customer journey. As a senior content designer, I led research and design for the “lost tickets” project—opting to create a service blueprint that provides a comprehensive view of the customer experience.
The team
- 1 senior content designer (Me)
- 2 UX writers
- 1 operations lead / former customer support rep
- 1 Help UX designer
- 1 Product UX designer
- 1 Product content designer
Our goals:
- Identify gaps in the end-to-end attendee experience
- Brainstorm opportunities
- Define experiments
Scope
We explored the journey as an event attendee moves across the whole Eventbrite ecosystem. But we didn’t own the roadmap for every stage of their journey: for example, I took initiative to share the service blueprint with the “checkout” team to consider fixing pain points and acting on ideas from the “exploration” and “purchase” phases of the journey.
The service blueprint
Here’s one of the resulting artifacts from our journey mapping / service blueprint efforts (shown zoomed-out to protect private information).
The design process
1. Discovery
I started with data and evidence: poring over web analytics, user research reports, and customer support transcripts. I learned about our customers’ needs, behaviors, and pain points throughout their journey.
2. Design
A few common scenarios surfaced from the research. To create the service blueprint/journey map, I played the role of an attendee persona and stepped through the journey myself–documenting the screens they navigate through.
3. Workshop
The service blueprint set the stage for collaboration. I hosted a workshop with folks across Eventbrite to brainstorm opportunities: how might we prevent problems or ease the pain they cause?
4. Action
The workshop surfaced 48 opportunities to improve the “lost tickets” experience! Some ideas applied to channels my team owned. Other ideas required buy-in from other teams to explore and implement.
Impact
Here are a few ways we’re helping folks get their tickets and access events. My team:
- Designed an automated flow in the Help chatbot to surface tickets in 1 click.
- Built a ticket lookup form that automatically re-sends tickets to folks who can’t log in.
- Optimized the “Find your tickets” help article. For example, we included more actionable steps and explored alternate structures for the information.
- Collaborated with product designers to build a new “Find my tickets” flow, which appeared in the Eventbrite navigation.
Finally, I connected with folks from other pillars to share the team’s ideas. Our goal was to break down silos, and work together to prevent the missteps and confusion that lead to bigger trouble later in the event attendee’s journey. The product designers explored numerous solutions, and we partnered to redesign key moments.
For example, my journey map showed that ticket-seekers get stuck on the “log in” screen: since they don’t create a login or set a password when they buy tickets, they don’t realize they have an account. So we designed a new flow that guides users through inputting their email address, verifying their account, and getting their tickets.
I partnered with folks across functions to design content for a new “Find my tickets” flow
In the months following the workshop, the solutions we designed are making a major impact:
Impact
In the months following the service blueprint workshops, the features and flows we built had a measurable impact
Flow earns 304k clicks
The “find my tickets” flow garnered roughly 304,000 clicks in the first three months.
27k users found lost tickets
An automated flow I built helped ~27,000 users find their lost tickets in its first year after launch—addressing a critical customer pain point
Ticket lookup form helps 8k users
In the first 2 weeks, 8,094 people landed on the ticket lookup form. This solution recovers tickets for people who can’t log in.
Ticket access increases 32%
The number of buyers seeing their tickets after purchase increased from 17% to 49%
I’m most proud that our journey map shone a spotlight on a critical customer pain point: Eventbrite leaders elevated “ticket access” to their top-five priorities in the months following the workshop.
Help chatbot provides one-click access to lost tickets. Select image to enlarge.
