by Pres. & CEO Nick Giammusso
VIPTIX conducts its business online all year long at VIPTIX.com. VIPTIX uses the telephone/fax, and we take advantage of the more recent technological advances such as social media, email and text messaging rapidly, effectively and efficiently to promote and sell our tickets. While technology presents a variety of ways to communicate, the results are not always positive. As a result, I find that VIPTIX, and all companies for that matter, is losing the ability to communicate face-to-face.
In my experiences, and especially in the ticket business, getting face-to-face with our clients builds trust, loyalty, confidence and credibility to build relationships at the grass roots level. VIPTIX does not want to become overly dependent communicating through the use of our smart phones and computers. Although they are great tools, they tend to focus on the object and not the person. Before the computer age, people actually ‘knew’ who they were doing business with.
The Super Bowl is by far the largest sporting event in North America. This year I packed my bags like I’ve done the last eighteen years and traveled to the Super Bowl for four days. The main reason I crawl out from behind my desk during Super Bowl week is to meet our clients face-to-face and hand deliver their Super Bowl tickets. Now I’ve heard many say “Why don’t you just FedEx their tickets for $20?” My response is always, “It’s just not the same!”
As a company, we try to get face-face with our clients each and every chance we get. VIPTIX has taken steps to increase our face-to-face time by using our ‘VIP Mobile Box Office’ as a Will Call window on-site at sports, concert and theatre events in WNY. We also encourage our clients to pick-up their seats in our Main Street Buffalo, NY headquarters. We travel to most major sporting events such as the Daytona 500, Masters, Final Four, Kentucky Derby, World Series, Winter Classic and of course the grand daddy of them all the Super Bowl.
This year at Super Bowl XLVI, in the beautiful city of Indianapolis, was no different. I strategically made my rounds from hotel to hotel doing what I love to do, delivering our clients’ Super Bowl tickets mano a mano. One by one, I sat with our clients in their Hotel Lobby or at the Bar over a beer and said hello not only as an ambassador of VIPTIX, but as a person getting to ‘know’ our clients. Of all my duties, tasks and responsibilities that my position handles at our company, right at the top of the list is getting to know my clients personally. Last week at the Super Bowl, it all started with, “Here are your Super Bowl tickets”!
Over the years VIPTIX has built a loyal client list that appreciates the extra steps we take to serve them on a personal level. Internally, we call such customer service touches, “VIP Experiences”! If it was at all humanly possible we would deliver all of our seats to our clients face-to face on a silver platter. We realize that’s not humanly possibly.
So we’ll see you in the French Quarter for Super Bowl XLVII in 2013. You can bet I will meet you with a big smile and your Super Bowl tickets in hand and I may just buy you a beer! 🙂