Guide: Seat Upgrades

Seat Upgrades lets patrons move into better available seats after they've bought, straight from their mobile ticket. They tap to upgrade, pay the difference, and their new tickets go live. You fill your best seats and capture the extra revenue without pulling in the box office.

What patrons see

An upgrade option appears on the mobile ticket when better seats are actually available for that performance. If nothing better is open, the option doesn't show, so patrons are never offered something you can't deliver. They choose the upgrade, pay the difference, and their original tickets are replaced with the new ones.

Where it works today

Seat Upgrades is available for clients on Spektrix, with more ticketing platforms to follow. Payment runs through Cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay, which require a Stripe integration.

Good candidates

Standard performances with more than one price band are the natural fit. A few things to think through before you switch it on:

• Special events. Galas, benefits, and high-price-point nights may not suit self-serve upgrades. Worth a conversation first.
• Member offers. You can discount upgrades for members, or use them to win back lapsed members. You set the floor.
• Dynamic pricing. Upgrades work cleanly when you adjust prices within your existing bands. Restructuring bands without updating seat prices can produce odd results.
• Full Seasons. Upgrades work best when available for the majority of performances - obviously, some exclusions apply, but keep your audience's expectations standardized by offering across your full season.

What you'll set up

This runs on a few pieces of Spektrix configuration on your side. Your CS contact handles the crowdEngage side and runs a full test with you before anything goes live.

In Spektrix, you'll need access to and knowledge of custom payment types, user permissions, seating overlays, and locks. Our Client Success team will guide you through the specifics.

You'll also need to have an integration set up with a Payment Processing Account.

Eligibility and rules

A few things behave by design:

• Comp and staff tickets, and any non-web ticket types, aren't eligible. (Comp tickets protect your revenue this way.)
• The whole order upgrades together, and every ticket type in the order has to be available in the target price band.
• Only the original purchaser can upgrade.
• No upgrades once a ticket has been scanned.

Getting started

Reach out to us at support@encorepro.com We'll walk through your pricing, confirm which events are a fit, set up the crowdEngage side, and run a test session before you go live.

Initial setup takes around two to three hours of configuration, then it runs on its own.