How to use the Exchange Tool

Updated 12/01/22

The Exchange Tool is used to contact customers for cancelled or rescheduled events, and can offer customers the option to pick whether they want to exchange their tickets for donations, refunds, rescheduled dates of the same show, or credit vouchers.

How it all works 

To enable the Exchange Tool for a show or event you need to tick the setting "exchange_allowed" at show or event level.

We then recommend setting the text for the different snippets (donate, exchange, refund) so the customers get the desired message when going to the exchange page.

The following snippets can be found in the Settings tab within the Public Website Snippets section, these can be set at Subdomain level as well if you use subdomains.

Snippets 

  •   Refund donation giftaid label – sets the text for the giftaid option (UK only)
  •   Refund intro html – Sets the text for the initial page, best used for giving details about the refund and the choices available
  •   Refund to donation thank you html – sets text for thankyou message if someone chooses to donate
  •   Refund to refund thank you html – sets text for thank you message if someone chooses refund
  •   Refund to reschedule thank you html - sets text for thank you message if someone chooses to exchange tickets for a new event date
  •   Refund to voucher thank you html – sets text for thank you message if someone chooses to exchange tickets for voucher

Settings

Once you have set the text for the snippets you will need to decide what options are available to customers, the tool can be configured using the following settings

These settings are available at Account, Subdomain, Program, Show and Event level. We recommend that you set them at Show or Event level. 

  •   exchange - exchange_allowed – setting needs to be active for the exchange tool to work, available at account, subdomain, program, show and event level
  •   exchange - exchange_donation_allowed – when active gives customers the option to donate
  •   exchange - exchange_giftaid_allowed – when active gives customers the option to gift aid their donation (UK only)
  •   exchange - exchange_refund_allowed – when active gives the customers option to have a refund
  •   exchange - exchange_reschedule_allowed – when active gives the customer the option to reschedule
  •   exchange - exchange_reschedule_allowed_offer_dates – when active gives the customer the option to select date they would like to exchange tickets to. Only available for events under the same show, also "exchange reschedule allowed" needs to be active for this to work, and events they can reschedule to need to be tagged with "reschedule"
  •   exchange - exchange_voucher_allowed – gives customers the option to exchange for voucher

If you decide to give customers the option to select the event that they want to exchange tickets to then you need to activate both settings  “exchange - exchange_reschedule_allowed” and “exchange - exchange_reschedule_allowed_offer_dates” and then tag the events they can exchange the tickets for with “reschedule

 Please note: the reschedule option only works for events under the same show that they are getting the exchange email for.

Sending out the email

Once you have set the snippets and decided what options you wish to give people when they go to exchange you can then get the email ready to send.

To send your first email, go to the event that you would like to use it on first. Go to the event Dashboard of that event and we’ve added a new tab called Refund COVID. Click on this. There is default text in the email already but you will need to make sure that you are happy with the text before sending.

Important: It is vital that you leave the link in the email body so that customers can click on it to use the Exchange Tool. 

Once you are happy with the text you just need to fill in the subject, and BCC an address if you wish and click the send email button. This will then send an email to all of your customers who have purchased tickets for that particular event. If you were to send this via Mailchimp or other email clients, you will only be able to send it to customers who have opted-in for email under GDPR. By sending the email through Ticketsolve, you are contacting all customers under performance of contract. 

Once the customers receive their emails, they click on the link that will take them to a specific webpage that will include their order details as shown below:

exchange_tool.png

The customer can now pick one of the 4 options that are available to them, these being:

  • Exchange full or partial amount to a credit voucher for use at a later date
  • Donate full or partial amount (remaining amount will be refunded)
  • Select a rescheduled event date to exchange tickets to
  • Refund the total amount

Once they have decided what they want to do, they will click on the Exchange button and those details will be stored against their order in Ticketsolve. 

What happens next?

It's important to note that this is not an automated process. Once you send the email and customers begin responding, nothing happens.

If a customer chooses refund.

Refunds will need to be processed manually at box office. For other that were paid by credit card (via Global Payments) and are less than 180 days old, you can refund these directly from the Ticketsolve system.

For orders that were originally paid by a payment method other than credit card (e.g. cash, chip and pin), or if the order is over 180 days old, you will need to refund them manually by contacting the customer. 

In exceptional circumstances where they are a very large number of credit card payments that need to be refunded, please contact the Support team as we may be able to mass-process these for you. Please note that this is only possible on orders with single events only, that have not been amended, were originally paid by credit card and are less than 180 days old.

If a customer chooses exchange

For exchanges to another event these will need to be done manually by the box office.

If a customer chooses donation

If the original payment on the order is not a card payment you will need to exchange the tickets for a donation manually

If a customer chooses credit

If the original payment on the order is not a card payment you will need to exchange the tickets for credit manually.

To see the options that your customers have selected so that you can process exchanges, donations and any manual refunds, just go to the Events Dashboard and view the Customer List. 

We’ve added some FAQ’s to the end of this document that will help with all the typical questions that we think you’ll have...

FAQ’s 

I’m not a charity, can I still take donations? 

There isn’t any reason that organisations can’t take donations – you don’t have to be a charity. The only time you’d need to think about taking donations is when you want to look at tax benefits on those donations, such as with Gift-Aid for those in the UK. In the current circumstances, we don’t think this is going to be an issue. However you should very clearly state in your messaging that you aren’t a charity and be totally transparent. Lots of crowdfunding campaigns aren’t charities. If you are up front and honest with your customers and tell them that these are very difficult times and that any help they can give will help out loads. 

How long should I give the customer to complete their choice?

We recommend that you give your customers at least 14 days from when you sent out the email. 

If someone asks for a refund and they paid by cash or chip & pin, but we are not able to process this in-person or do not have access to PDQ machines, what do I do?

If a customer paid in cash or by chip & pin you will have to contact the customer to arrange a refund. You can refund via bank transfer, cheque or manual credit card via your Global Payments portal once you have admin access and have full card details. There is good help steps on this here and more general help on the portal here. 

If some customers don’t reply and give a choice, what do I do?

We recommend that you contact all customers who have not replied to your email. Give them a call to ask them how they would like to proceed. Remember to give your box office a script that they can follow to try and ask the customer for an exchange to credit voucher or donation rather than a refund. 

 

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Comments

23 comments
Date Votes
  • This is great thank you. People are less likely to go for the donatio option if they are doing it digitally so the option of just credit or donation would be fabulous and thank you for working on that :-)

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  • Where a customer has asked to leave a donation or get a credit voucher, does this use existing products that we have set up already for those or will new ones be automatically created for this?

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  • We have set this up but have been informed by customers the full refund is not including their booking fees please can someone help?

    Kirstie- Harlow Playhouse

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  • Thanks for the feedback everyone.

    Alex, good question. We will likely create a specific donation and voucher product for this but will confirm tomorrow.

    Kirstie, noted. We are working on this and again will update in the morning. As there's such a variety of booking fee structures out there it's somewhat complex.

    Talk tomorrow :)

    Conor

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  • Many thanks for pulling this together so quickly! We are rescheduling many of our shows. Is there any realistic potential of your being able to create an option to select the show with its new date? Or, simply for us to add the new date into the text and for 'Transfer my tickets to the new date' to be an option?

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  • Like Angela I'd like an option for them to transfer their tickets to the rearranged date,
    thanks
    Daithi

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  • Will an option to add gift aid also be included on the donation section?

    Also, I know this has all been put together really quickly and we're all incredibly grateful, but as this is tool is for individual events, is there thought on dealing with a booking as a whole?  Contacting customers based on each event would result in multiple emails being sent for those booking for lots of events at the same time...

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  • Quick question: I guessing that this only covers the ticket prices paid? Would we need to deal with individual cases where they would like uncollected extras refunded as well (car parking, ice creams, etc.)?

    Also, going back to Angela and Daithi's points: We can transfer people to a new event already by changing the event information to the new date, but can there be a way that once we have done this we run this script and those who choose not do any of the options can keep their amended booking?

    Thanks again guys!

    James

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  • Hello everyone !

    Apologies for the delay coming back to your questions.

    Alex, yes we will be creating specific voucher and donation products for this that we will exchange to automatically when we run the scripts. This will make it easier to report on those that are exchanged vouchers or donations vs normal ones.

    Kirstie, making this all happen so quickly meant we could not include booking fees as it's quite complex within our infrastructure. We can actually refund the full amount to include booking fees but the customer display will only show the ticket value so you need to communicate this in the emails sent. In addition to the complexity, we also have customers who wish to retain the booking fee and only refund the ticket value so there's a few things that we need to consider.

    Angela & Daithí, again due to time and complexity we do not have the ability to offer an exchange to a particular date however, if customers wish to retain tickets for a rescheduled show you can give them that option in the email you send and ask them to do nothing. That way when all others who wish to donate, take credit or get a refund are dealt with, you just need to change the date on the show :)

    Kelly, yes we plan to add giftaid in future iterations. Will update as soon as we do so. Regarding dealing with a booking as a whole, we certainly considered it but again due to time, complexity and capacity we took the per event approach to ensure we could get a working version out. The majority of orders through the entire Ticketsolve system are for single events so we had to make a choice that would help the majority. Not saying we won't come back to it but for now, it's just the per event approach.

    And lastly James, it's probably best for you to deal with individual orders that have extras where possible. On your second point, yes like outlined above.

    Always great to finish on a yes.

    We'll continue to work on this over the coming days and update you on everything.

    Stay safe and we hope you all can enjoy the weekend.

    Conor & all at Ticketsolve

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  • Cheers Conor!

    Just an extra one while we're thinking about it: Is there a time limit for these automated actions to be completed in (or one that can be set)? One example being "you have 14 days to complete the process or you will be issued an exchange voucher".

    James

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  • Thanks Conor, if we set it to refund the booking fee, will the Festival then be charged the booking fee from Ticketsolve?

    Thanks for making this uncertain time so much easier.
    Elaine

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  • Hi James,

    There's no time limit on our end but you can choose one and include in your email to customers. You can then disable the 'exchange_allowed' setting after 14 days (or whatever timeframe you wish).

    There's no automated part of this process to begin with, we manually run scripts to do the refunds/exchanges/donations and once started, will then automate it to run each day so it mops up any new responses that have come through. We'll then stop when you ask us to.

    Elaine, we do not charge for refunded tickets.

    The video at top of article has been updated today with new changes made so be sure to take a look.

    Thanks,

    Conor

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  • Sorry I missed the first email re setting this up (was sunnying myself in Barbados)

    Can someone send me a link please and also where do we set up the email templates and how do we get it to look like the one you got above - sorry if this is answered in the previous video.

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  • Hi Hayley,

    I have just sent you a link to the original video.

    Give us a shout if you need anything!

    Thanks,
    Aoife

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  • Hi, when do the exchanges start ? I've seen none so far
    thanks
    Daithi

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  • With rescheduling for multiple dates: am I right in thinking this won't automatically move people to the selected dates?

    I couldn't quite make out on the video, but it sounds like the date change request will be added to the order comments. Am I correct?

    James

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  • Hi all,
    Thanks for all your work so far in response, great support. Similar to James above, I'm wondering about how seat selection works with exchanging to a new date if it is automated, or is it just a comment on their order?
    Thanks,
    Mark

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  • Hi all,

    Yes, James is correct on this one. We are handling are all the refunds our side, but customers who have opted to exchange to another date will need to be moved manually.

    As Nick suggests in the video, you could just change the date on the calendar as opposed to creating a new date and swapping everyone over, but where there are multiple dates the orders will need to be amended.

    Give us a shout with any questions - we are here to help!

    Thanks,
    Aoife

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  • Just to be clear: any date change requests are added to the comments for the order?

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  • Sorry Aoife, one more question. Is it possible to add an 'I'm happy with the new date' option? I'm thinking about customers who haven't read the email or who have a typo in their email address vs people who have read the email but are happy with the new date. They would look the same in the comments. We would want to do a follow-up call with anyone who hasn't responded to the email to make sure they are aware of the new date, and without a read report like Mailchimp, the 'do nothing if you're happy' option somewhat confuses our follow up campaign.
    Thanks a mill,
    Mark

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  • Hey Mark,

    That follow up campaign sounds like a really good idea. I just checked this out with the Support team and Dunners (the oracle!) reckons you should use the reschedule option instead of saying "do nothing if you're happy to exchange" instead.

    James, yes that is correct. They will show up in the automated comments but the best place to see it is in the 'Customer List' report in Events Dashboard.

    Get in touch with any queries and also we just announced that on Thursday we will be doing a live webinar on the Exchange Tool if you are interested.

    Thanks,
    Aoife

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  • Is the Exchange Tool still fully functional post(ish!)-Covid?

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  • Hey Jonathan,

    Yes, the exchange tool is still fully functional, but we are not running the mass refunds on a weekly basis as we did during the pandemic. If you need us to process mass refunds for you please submit a ticket to the helpdesk and we'll see what we can do.

    Thanks,
    Aoife

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