I had planned to attend the Madonna concert with friends. But we bought the tickets last March and in the interim, life happened, schedules shifted, minds were changed.
Over the years, I have bought many tickets through Ticketmaster (a monopoly maybe?) without issue. Until Madonna. When we decided to sell our tickets. (See above – life, schedules, changed minds. And plastic surgery – hers, not ours.)
How challenging was it? Let me count the ways…
Bait and switch. The show was supposed to start at 8:30pm. Some of us are lightweights where bedtime is concerned and prioritize sleep over almost everything else. 8:30 felt late, but hey, it’s Madonna, we’ll suck it up. Then social media was blowing up because she wasn’t taking the stage until 10:30 or 11pm. Repeatedly. This just felt disrespectful and unnecessary. If it happened once for tech issues, ok. But every show? No thanks. I didn’t pay to go hear a DJ play house music.
I felt boxed in. When I tried to offload the tickets the “transfer ticket” button was grayed out. This left me with two options – sell the tickets back to Ticketmaster at a greatly reduced price or sell them to other buyers on the Ticketmaster platform (and compete with others trying to do the same.)
Do we hedge our bets and try to sell on the app, or minimize our losses and sell back to Ticketmaster? Both options had their downsides. Now my cortisol is up.
It was a waste of time. There’s a reason I don’t gamble. I don’t like the feeling of not knowing what the outcome is going to be (some call that being a control freak. I say “tomato, tomato.”) In the end, we sold two tickets back to Ticketmaster and took the financial hit because some funds back were better than no funds. I was able to sell the other two to a friend (who was gracious enough to pay the face value despite my telling her to “name her price.”) But it was not without a lot of back and forth among the four of us and many exchanges with Ticketmaster.
Extra steps. Because the tickets weren’t transferable, I had to give my friend access to my Ticketmaster account so she could add them to her digital wallet. Not the end of the world, just one more step in an already annoying situation.
So, what does all of this tell us about leadership? A few things.
While the context may be different, sadly, these types of issues get repeated in organizations regularly. And when they do, there is a significant impact on the relationship the manager and/or organization has with the employee.
Here are leadership lessons I’m taking from away from all of this:
- Don’t make things harder than they need to be. We should be asking ourselves what’s the easiest way to achieve the end goal and the most efficient and seamless way possible for all involved. I don’t know how Ticketmaster operates on the backend. Presumably, there is a method to the madness, but just make the damned tickets transferable. It would have saved a lot of time and aggravation on my end, and preserved some brand integrity on their end.
- Be consistent. Given that my friends and I have all purchased tickets with Ticketmaster many times, it was a surprise that we couldn’t easily transfer them, and it was an inconsistent brand experience. Our brains like certainty. The degree that leaders and companies can be consistent in how they show up in both actions and decisions goes a long way toward living up to brand expectations and creating security for employees.
- Communicate. When I checked the FAQ, there was a vague statement that said something like “Tickets to some shows are not transferable.” with no explanation why. There’s a reason why good change management plans require leaders to repeat the same information over and over. In the absence of information, humans will make up their own stories about why things are the way they are. In my case, I just decided that Ticketmaster was a money hoarding and mean monopoly (see above, cortisol was up! 👹) What stories are employees in your organization making up due to lack of information?
- Provide more vs. fewer options. When my nephews were little, I tried to provide them with options. For instance, if they wanted a second dessert, the answer was a definitive, “No.” but I could give them a later bedtime or an extra story at bedtime. “Take your pick.” This gave them a sense of control and choice. While the customer service response from Ticketmaster was quick, it wasn’t helpful. Everything I threw out as a possible solution they said they couldn’t do, and I felt stuck with what (to me) felt like two less-than-desirable options for offloading the tickets.
- Be clear about the full picture. Unintended consequences will get you every time. Guess what? I need to pay taxes on the money that Ticketmaster is paying me for the two tickets I sold back to them! This is an IRS issue, but one that wasn’t clear until I had completed selling two tickets back to Ticketmaster. When we’re giving people information, let’s give them all the information and eliminate surprises on the back end.
Having said all of that, I realize that some of what transpired may be due to contractual agreements with Madonna or the venue (the venerable “Boston Gaahden”) and not specifically Ticketmaster.
My interactions, however, were with Ticketmaster, and therefore, the annoyance and frustration I felt was attributed to Ticketmaster. This can happen in organizations as well.
You may merely be the messenger and not the mastermind around internal change or decisions. Yet the way you handle the situation will still impact your leadership brand.
