Are you charged with running events?
If so, you’re in the right place.
Today, we’re going to examine the various aspects of running an event.
Most important, we’re going to address it with the intention of achieving the goal – customer safety and experience.
That way, you can achieve your personal goal: Proactive Operations.
Wouldn’t you like the peace of mind in knowing every one of your events is running smoothly?
After many years in the industry, we believe we’ve figured out the secret for ensuring an effective and efficient event operation.
Whether you’re running a large-scale event at a convention center, music festival, fair, or stadium, we’re confident you’ll benefit from the five solutions we want to share with you today.
An ultimate package for ultimate events.
Individually, these are superior solutions.
All with unique and valuable features that can benefit all types of industry operations.
Imagine their power when you combine their abilities into one ultimate event management package for your operation.
We’re going to show you how to execute legendary event management using the most innovative solutions in the marketplace.
Are you ready?
Let’s go.
Your events have lots of moving parts.
Would you agree?
We’d compare managing an event to synchronized swimming.
Everyone needs to be well-trained, prepared, and equipped with the right tools to play their part in order to succeed.
All departments and staff need to be in unison because if one person is thrown off course, it has a ripple effect on the entire “dance.”
The good news is you can implement these five distinct solutions to bring your teams and resources together for a professional event experience for everyone involved.
An incident management system (IMS) is the granddaddy of them all.
When there are people congregating in one place, issues and incidents are bound to occur.
An incident management system allows you to organize your operation and handle what happens in the most professional manner possible.
Think of it as the centralized repository for all your incidents and their associated information – in digital format.
If you’re still using pen and paper to document incident details, it’s time to reevaluate your operation.
Having digital information not only allows you to defend your business in court, but you can use the functionality of an IMS to communicate updates and details of incidents or issues to the right people on your team.
That means you can turn on useful automation in your operation.
Has a wet spill ever slipped through the cracks?
This leads to extraneous medical issues and additional stress for you and your risk managers.
Nowadays, you can use an IMS to mitigate this type of scenario before it turns into a big mess for your event, team, and – most important – your customers.
With these systems, you can put groups together to inform specific individuals by text, email, and mobile applications of certain incident types.
Doing this helps them efficiently, effectively, and expeditiously respond to incidents and issues according to your incident management process.
All departments and people are in streamlined communication, awareness is high, vital information is being accurately documented, and you’re able to use the data to ensure your next event is, well, even more legendary.
Do you recall that we noted above that you could inform need-to-know personnel about specific incidents through mobile applications?
Well, that’s not all you can do with the incident management mobile apps we’re talking about.
They’re loaded with powerful functionality and purpose that has been derived from listening to industry experts like yourself over many years.
Mobile applications exist for both mobile handheld devices (e.g., cell phones) and tablets.
They have several benefits, but incident management mobile apps most effectively let your frontline staff report issues and incidents without having to track down a supervisor, security, or medical team.
Your mobile supervisors and risk management teams can use tablet applications to document vital on-scene details of an incident on the fly.
Consider the benefits of this. What does it do to your liability protection?
It keeps your incidents honest.
Think about how quickly someone’s story will change from a lie to the truth when they see your team collecting video, audio, and witness statements of what really took place.
Ask for signatures too, and you’ve got signed, sealed, and case closed.
You’ll have a supercharged IMS, now use that power for your mobile response teams and watch as everything gets handled the way you need it to for peace of mind.
Issues and incidents aren’t the only responsibility you have on the event day.
There are operational tasks that need to get done before, during, and after your events.
Anything from opening parking lot gates to turning on the escalators needs to be scheduled, tracked, and executed.
But, here’s the thing, you don’t want that logged and communicated in your IMS. Imagine all the confusion if that was the case.
How are you currently managing all your essential operational tasks?
Keep reading if you’re using a spreadsheet, pen & paper, doing nothing, or using some sort of “solution,” but you need a better alternative.
Task management software is a simple, compelling solution, which can be used in unison with your team’s incident management mobile apps.
Modernized systems will let you create and schedule vital tasks based on time, previous tasks, and event markers (i.e., the opening of gates, second musical set, third quarter, or seventh inning).
Once your tasks are created and scheduled in the system, reminders, and notifications will be automatically sent to your staff via text, email, or a proprietary mobile app like the apps we mentioned previously.
Your team can not only mitigate issues and incidents from an IMS; now, they can expertly perform their operational duties using task management software.
Your IMS and mobile apps are ideal for when stuff happens, your task management software is unmatched when it comes to performing operational duties.
What happens when your attendees, customers, or patrons need something?
What do you do then?
Do you have a system in place? Do you even have a process for handling these requests?
In most cases, we’ve seen that operations will try to manage assistance and service requests in what they might call an “incident management system.”
But:
Does it make sense to include food, suite, mobility assistance, taxi, and housekeeping requests in the same ‘queue’ as protein and wet spills, fights, slip and falls, bomb threats, and parking lot fires?
Not at all.
Even worse, these customer requests become “lower priority calls” within an IMS, which will slip through the cracks. The effect is poor service and unhappy customers.
No one achieves Proactive Operations or peace of mind.
There’s another problem with managing customer requests within your IMS.
You don’t get the data you need to execute first-class customer service.
How would you expect to do that anyway with your wheelchair requests being mixed in with your anaphylactic shock incidents?
Separate your incidents from your service requests to see both facets of your operation drastically improve.
Trust us, it works.
Losing a possession is a terrible experience.
You feel vulnerable – it’s such a frustrating feeling no one wants to go through.
Especially when you’ve paid money to attend an event.
You’re supposed to be enjoying yourself or learning something new.
If your customers must experience losing their belongings, the last thing you want is to provide them with a miserable process for reporting and claiming their possessions.
The fewer bumps in the road or hiccups they must face on their way to being reunited with their lost items, the better for everyone.
Using lost and found software at your events is the final ingredient to an extraordinary recipe for customer experience and building loyalty.
You want them to come back, right?
Make a selfless investment into a solution that will always bring a smile to your customers’ faces, even in a situation as bad as this.
Give them confidence in knowing your staff is covering all bases to get their possessions back into their hands as soon as possible.
Introducing a web-based lost and found solution adds several benefits to your ultimate event management package.
If a customer makes it home before they realize they dropped their wallet, no sweat.
The type of system we’re talking about will give them the ability to report the lost item via your website.
From an operational perspective, this type of system moves your lost and found department from a storage bin to organized shelves with identifying tags.
It creates efficiency because it reduces the time it takes to identify and locate someone’s lost items.
Your digital system will be able to match lost and found items automatically for you.
No need to search the aisles to find a match.
Now, you can compare lost items with found items within your software and go to the exact location.
Efficiency in this situation leads to items getting home faster, and of course, happier customers.
Need we say more?
You could buy event management solutions, one here, and one there, and try to make them work together.
Or, you could - and should - implement a platform that combines the unique functionality of each one of these solutions we’ve outlined in today’s article.
Implementing and using these solutions to produce a positive impact on your operation leads to Proactive Operations – and peace of mind. Are you ready to deliver the ultimate event experience to your customers?
So, will you be implementing an incident management system, incident management mobile apps, task management software, request tracking software, and lost and found software for your next event?
Editor's note: This post was originally published in January 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness and freshness.