Does the trade show industry offer an outdated customer experience?
16. July 2018 · 2min. reading time
Google, Amazon, and others are fast, convenient, personalized, and secure. In the trade show industry, websites are usually very slow (on average, five times slower than a standard Google search), and organizers are happy when events successfully attract large crowds and visitors have to wait in long lines – all while Amazon has opened a store where you can simply grab what you need and leave without being held up by a checkout counter. Signing up for an Amazon account, for example, takes less than a minute. When a visitor wants to register for an event, it sometimes takes 30 minutes to answer seemingly unnecessary questions. Some organizers are working on their user interfaces, but very few are working on significantly improving the customer experience.
PRESENTATION ON DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AT THE UFI EUROPEAN CONFERENCE IN VERONA
At the 2018 UFI European Conference in Verona, Italy, Gunnar Heinrich (CEO of adventics & Scan2Lead) once again gave a presentation on “Digital Transformation,” together with his colleagues from the Digital Innovation Committee, Stephan Forseilles (easyfairs) and Matthias Tesi Baur (MBB-Media). The audience, consisting of trade show organizers, venue operators, associations, and service providers, was asked to actively participate and vote on specific topics in real time using a polling tool.
THE PUBLIC’S PERSPECTIVE ON THE ISSUE
It couldn’t be more obvious that UFI members and attendees in the room agree that the trade show industry offers an outdated customer experience. But why, then, is nothing changing? Why does everyone stick to their old habits and prioritize “business as usual” over the customer experience? As the feedback shows, it’s a mix of habit, fear, and a lack of communication.
“We’ve been doing it this way for 20 years!” (Habit) is one of the most common objections that participants who want to make a change have heard. This is closely followed by the excuse, “If we change this or that, my event might not be a success anymore” – which touches on the aspect of ‘fear.’ And the lack of communication becomes clear when, for example, you realize that the event manager thinks the marketing team doesn’t want to shorten the registration questionnaire, while the marketing team thinks that top management definitely wants the data, and top management is convinced that the event manager has good reasons for such a cumbersome registration process.
STAY IN TOUCH WITH THE UFI DIGITAL INNOVATION COMMITTEE
This article is based on Stephan Forseille’s post “As event organizers in the 4th Industrial Age, we are providing an outdated customer experience…” in the UFI Digital Innovation Group on LinkedIn. Stay in touch and up to date on digital innovations in the trade show industry.
Join our LinkedIn group (“UFI Digital Innovation Group” or http://www.ufidigital.com) or follow us on Twitter (@UFIDigital). Join your fellow experts in the events industry, become part of the community, and help shape the future of events together.
Be sure to join us at the next Focus Meeting hosted by the Digital Innovation Group: Once a year, we invite CIOs, marketing managers, IT specialists, and anyone interested in the digital transformation of our events industry to a Focus Meeting. In addition to interesting talks and presentations, the three finalists for the UFI Digital Innovation Award will also present their solutions at the Focus Meeting. Join us and vote for the winner.
Munich, July 16, 2018, © adventics GmbH
