York Theatre Royal has been producing great drama in the beautiful city of York for over 270 years and is one of the country’s leading producing theatres. Each year the theatre entertains over 200,000 people with its wide variety of performances, events and activities, using Purple Seven's Survey tool to connect with their audiences and gain immediate customer feedback.
Gabriella Lee is York Theatre Royal’s Press and Marketing Assistant, and has been using Purple Seven’s surveys for a year. They are easy to send and the results are immediate as they’re processed in real time, so Gabriella often checks the survey results at the start of each morning to get a snapshot of the audience’s reaction.
“It’s so useful to get an immediate feel for what our audiences are thinking about the show, just a few hours after they came to see it. This is especially useful for our in-house productions, because when they’re previewing, we can send their responses to the creative teams, which helps them in their artistic decisions, as they get the show ready for its opening night.”
Producers and promoters are often crying out for information about shows, and in addition to Purple Seven’s snapshot reports, which feature sales and audience information from the night before or the whole run of a show, Purple Seven’s survey reports can also be sent to them. While we all have anecdotal evidence of how a show is being received, Purple Seven’s survey reports bring a new level of sophistication to audience responses, with survey results being presented in a range of accessible charts and graphs.
“Because the system is so easy to use, mailing out the surveys is completely painless, and producing reports happens at the click of a button, which saves us so much time. Until recently, we would have had to manually process survey mailing and reporting, but now, we can easily produce a PDF report that we can quickly email to a producer”.
Audience insight isn’t just useful for marketing teams. Often the surveys prompt customers to tell us about their experience beyond just the show – it might be about queues at the toilets, or that there weren’t enough hot drinks available. Because this information is made available each morning, Gabriella can easily share this information with her Front of House teams, so that they can improve their service for that night’s performance.
“Purple Seven’s surveys have really helped us connect with our audiences better. The results can be shared with many departments, and because the information comes through overnight, we can all react immediately to improve our customer experience.”
Gabriella and her team have now used Purple Seven’s surveys for a year, and the fact that they are so easy to use, and have saved them so much processing time, means that they are now an integral part of the marketing and press team’s daily lives.