by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
While some of the music the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra will perform in the upcoming season was composed as far back as the 18th century, the methods behind bringing people to the concert hall is nothing but 21st century.
For years the Symphony has depended on direct contact with active and potential subscribers to fill the seats at Jacoby Symphony Hall at the T-U Center. Six months ago, the effort was raised several octaves with the addition of a new Telemarketing Manager and some of the latest technology for subscription sales and customer service.
“Outbound marketing has been a major revenue stream for the symphony for as long as I’ve been here,” said the Symphony’s Executive Director Alan Hopper, who is beginning his seventh season with the organization.
Chester Kuzia joined the symphony six months ago and brought with him more than 20 years of experience in telemarketing and a wide range of products.
“I have managed call center sales and customer service operations ranging from major financial institutions like American Express and Capital One to timeshares to home improvement and pest control,” he said.
After spending years moving around the country working on a variety of outbound marketing projects. Kuzia, a Jacksonville native, said he decided it was time to come home. He said he also felt the time was right to use his expertise to give something back to his hometown.
“I wanted to take my experience and use it to improve the cultural landscape for the community,” he said.
The Symphony call center is nothing like most of the places where Kuzia has worked during his career, “But we do things the same way here you’d do them at a 500-seat call center,” added Kuzia.
He has also watched the methodology advance over the years and said one of the first things he wanted to do for the Symphony was replace a well-worn collection of index cards with a computerized dialing and records management system.
“Our connected-call rate has tripled compared to the previous system. We’re able to increase business by talking to more people,” said Kuzia.
In addition to allowing the symphony’s 10-person outbound marketing team to be more efficient by automatically dialing phone numbers and connecting customers to an operator immediately, the system can also be used to gather data that will be used to develop future marketing materials.
Kuzia said part of every telephone contact is to find out what people like about the symphony from the selection of music to how the brochures look.
The system has been in place for eight weeks and the results are quite satisfactory, said Hopper.
“Sales have been very strong this summer. We are considerably ahead of this time last year.”
That doesn’t come as a surprise to Kuzia.
“The Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra is a great product. It practically sells itself,” he said.
For information on the Symphony’s 2007-08 season, subscriptions or single-performance tickets call 355-5547 – if you haven’t been already contacted. You may also visit www.jaxsymphony.org.