Bass Hall Launches SmartSeat with TNEW by Tessitura

Bass Hall Upgrades Mobile Seat Selection

We are excited to announce Bass Performance Hall is live with SmartSeat, Adage’s mobile seat selection product. With this go live, Bass Hall becomes the first TNEW client to use Adage’s select-your-own-seat (SYOS) platform in conjunction with their TNEW by Tessitura purchase path.

What is TNEW by Tessitura?

Let’s start with Tessitura. Tessitura is a comprehensive CRM platform specifically created by and for arts and cultural organizations. It offers organizations one unified system to manage customer relationships and track all customer activity across the entire organization. Member activities such as purchases, donations, class registrations, etc. are held and accessed in the organizations Tessitura database.

TNEW integrates directly with an organizations Tessitura database. It is responsible for disseminating information used in a customer purchase path, like event dates, times and pricing. This information is stored and managed in TNEW allowing it to handle all transaction stages including selecting seats and applying member discounts.

Bass Hall Adage Project Beginnings

Performing Arts Fort Worth, Inc. (PAFW) founded December 17, 1992, is the 501[c] [3] non-profit organization that oversees the day-to-day operations and management as well as long-term capital needs of the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall complex. Bass Performance Hall is the crown jewel of a city which boasts the nation’s third largest cultural district.

Built entirely with private funds, Bass Performance Hall is permanent home to the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Texas Ballet Theater, Fort Worth Opera, and the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and Cliburn Concerts. Each resident company operates independently from Performing Arts Fort Worth and manages its own programming schedule at Bass Hall.

Performing Arts Fort Worth presents national Broadway touring product under the Broadway at the Bass banner, as well as programming that includes Broadway Specials, Popular Entertainment and McDavid Studio Concert Series.

The 2,042-seat multipurpose Hall is characteristic of the classic European opera house form. An 80-foot diameter Great Dome tops the Founders Concert Theater while two 48-foot tall angels grace the Grand Facade. Since the Hall opened in May 1998, the angels have become preeminent cultural icons of the Dallas-Fort Worth community. The Hall itself is renowned for its superb acoustics, exceptional sight lines and ambiance on level with the great halls of the world.

Bass Performance Hall has been an Adage client since 2014 with the completion of a full site redesign and development project. Adage achieved the project’s main goal, a responsive, mobile-friendly design.

“The Adage website redesign and development project exceeded our expectations. Way over the top!” – Chris De Leon, Director of IT, Bass Performance Hall

Bass Hall Next Steps

Following their success with a responsive site, Bass Hall was looking to offer truly mobile seat selection capabilities. They were constantly running in to challenges and frustration with their current seat selection and venue building system. PAFW has the ability to offer a variety of venue configurations depending on the performance. They could not set up new venue configurations on their own. Every new venue configuration required technical support which was not budget or time-friendly.

Another challenge was communicating different chair types to patrons. Seating ranges from cushioned theater seats, to arm-less wood chairs, to tall opera-style chairs. Bass Hall wanted to increase patron satisfaction by notifying them of a seat type during the seat selection process.

SmartSeat, Enter Stage Right

Bass Hall chose SmartSeat for increased flexibility when setting up venue configurations and to provide patrons with a truly-mobile SYOS experience. All this without interrupting their current situation. SmartSeat pulls information from the existing Tessitura database and works within the current TNEW purchase path.

 

SmartSeat licensees are able to create styles tied directly to Tessitura conditions. Any condition that exists in Tessitura, will be available in SmartSeat’s admin tool, called Venue Builder. The Venue Builder allows SmartSeat users to create a custom color, icon and message attached to that condition.

 

Bass Hall also utilized SmartSeat’s robust seat style tools to provide custom messaging during seat selection. These messages alert patrons to the type of seating, and can even require a confirmation when selecting more unexpected seats. This is a tool many SmartSeat clients use for partial view seating.

 

This flexibility gives Bass Hall control to create true-to-life seat maps and provide customers with the best understanding of seat they are purchasing.

SmartSeat Project Success

“Thanks to the team at Adage, we have leveraged SmartSeat to improve our customers’ online experience – in particular the mobile experience which now hosts our highest number of users, new users, and sessions.” – Chris De Leon, Director of IT, Bass Performance Hall

SmartSeat provides:

• Mobile seat selection
• True-to-life, custom venue maps
• View from seat images that can be attached to actual seats
• Custom messaging options to provide seat information to patrons

Learn More