StubHub, the world’s largest ticket market place, recently announced the launch of a new ticket recommendation feature that will enhance the personalized customer experience currently available on the ecommerce platform.
The “best value” sort option, available on desktop, mobile Web and StubHub’s native iOS, and Android app empowers fans to quickly identify great deals, experience more clarity during the ticket discovery process, and make more informed purchasing decisions.
Loyalty360 caught up with Ryan Kennedy, Senior Product Manager for StubHub, to learn more about how this new feature will enhance the customer experience.
What factors prompted StubHub to launch this new ticket recommendation feature and what are your goals for it from a customer engagement/customer experience perspective?
Fans come to StubHub to connect with incredible events and experiences, so we are continually working on new ways to better connect them with the artists, teams, stars, and more, that they want to see.
Customers told us that quality rankings – the best seats for the best price – would help them make better decisions. So, we tested a few options that would complement our current price ranking, and found that fans appreciated additional options that helped customize their shopping and selling experience.
The new ticket recommendation feature on StubHub helps customers better sort through our market place to find the tickets that best match their needs and how they want to build their experiences at the show or event.
How will this impact the customer experience?
StubHub has the largest secondary ticketing market place in the world, and as such, we have a vast ticket selection across thousands of events. Our new ticket recommendation tool allows our fans to instantly find great deals in this massive market place and make more informed purchasing decisions during the search and discovery process.
Did customer feedback play a role in this launch and, if so, in what way?
Customer feedback always plays a critical role in the launch of our products. We are continually listening to our customers and testing new features to benchmark and better respond to their preferences. For the StubHub ticket recommendation feature, once we confirmed our fans’ interest through testing, we were able to make thoughtful decisions in order to implement these changes.
What does CX mean to StubHub?
Our fans are our incredibly important to us at StubHub, and customer experience is always top of mind for our team. In addition to providing more sorting options through our ‘best value’ ticket recommendation feature, we also 
rolled out an instant-resell button for customers. This way, if a fan realizes that they can’t attend an event after purchasing that perfect ticket, they avoid any headaches in trying to relist it. These two updates arrived shortly after the launch of more personalized display options for pricing, as well as a redesigned mobile app with improved recommendation algorithms and discovery engines. All of these updates are a part of our efforts to prioritize customer convenience and experience.
How do you define customer loyalty and has that definition changed or evolved in recent years?
At StubHub, we believe customer loyalty is directly tied into customer service and experience. We created and live by the StubHub Fan Promise, which is our commitment to serving our fans and making sure that they are satisfied with their experience. It’s knowing that we will go that extra mile that turns users into loyal fans.
What are you most proud of?
At StubHub, we want to connect people with memorable events and experiences. Our goal is to help them build amazing memories for themselves, and their groups of families and friends. So we work every day to make it easier and more rewarding to find the tickets that enable them to do that.
On the technology side, we are advancing personalization methods and new algorithms that leverage our data on how people purchase, and combining them for new features across all of the screens on which people engage with us. While we feel good about StubHub’s leading position in the secondary ticketing marketplace, we continue to evolve the options and end-to-end experiences for our fans.