If you need to allow customers to book on behalf of other customers, the Facilitated Booking feature will be of use. This allows you to use Relationships to specify the ways in which you want customers to be able to book on behalf of others - which can then be done both online and in the Sales Interface.
NOTE: see this article for more information on setting up Relationships.
It’s very similar to the way in which Individuals can book on behalf of Organisations, but with slightly different terminology required:
- Facilitator: the customer making the booking
- Owner: the customer on whose behalf the booking is made, i.e. the person who will be attending an event or owning a membership
As with Individuals booking for Organisations, the facilitator makes the booking and receives the order confirmation, but the order is visible on both parties’ customer records. Another difference, however, is that the owner’s eligibility can be used - so the facilitator can make the booking but take advantage of the owner’s memberships, tags etc. for the purposes of offers, promo codes and so on.
What are the benefits?
This is an optional feature which will be of particular use under certain circumstances. A good example of this would be to allow parents to book on behalf of children for youth classes, but if there are any situations where you would like to allow one customer to book on behalf of another, this is a way of allowing that.
There are various potential benefits available for using this, including:
- The ability to store separate information for the owner and the facilitator
- The ability, therefore, to report accurately on the person who attends each performance or owns each membership
- A better online booking experience for customers, including using the owner’s eligibility for things like offers, memberships and promo codes
Click on the Setting Up link below if you need to set Facilitated Booking up for the first time, otherwise you can move straight on to the Making Facilitated Bookings section.
Setting Up
Very little setup work is required in Spektrix in order to be able to use Facilitated Booking. However if you want to allow this online you will need to make sure your website is set up in a particular way. Below we’ve broken down the setup work required into two sections - Spektrix and your website.
In Spektrix
The first thing you need to do is to set up one or more relationship types with the ability for one party to book on behalf of another. You can do this on all of your relationship types if you want, or alternatively you can apply to only those types that you think are most likely to benefit from this feature - it’s entirely up to you.
You will need to have the General Administrator user role to be able to do this, as you need access to the Admin Interface. Head to Customers > Relationship Types and either look for the Relationship that you want to edit, or set up a new one.
Decide which party in the relationship should be able to book on behalf of the other, and then select the Can act on behalf of option for whichever side of the relationship you choose. You can set relationships to allow Facilitated Booking just one way, or both ways.
NOTE: if you don’t enable this on any relationship types, you can continue to use relationships as you always have done, and nothing will change in the system.
Once you’ve set up at least one relationship type in this way, any customers with this relationship - and who are connected in the relevant way to another customer - will be able to use Facilitated Bookings in the Sales and Fundraising Interfaces.
Online
Assuming you want to make Facilitated Bookings available online, then once you’ve set up one or more relationships as described above you need to make sure your website directs customers to the correct iframe.
There is a separate iframe specifically for the purposes of Facilitated Bookings, called Choose Attendee. You can choose to use this across all Events online, and Memberships as well, or alternatively only allow it for certain things. As it’s an iframe this will pull through the existing style sheet you already have in place, but you will need to talk to your web developer to get it implemented.
There are three ways that you can prompt the Choose Attendee iframe online. We recommend that you pass the following information on to your web developer, using one of the methods described to configure the URL being used.
Only specified Events
If you want to choose which Events to allow Facilitated Booking for, then you can amend the URL based on the Choose Seats iframe. Here’s what to provide to your web developer:
Append a ChooseAttendee=true parameter to a ChooseSeats page. For example:
https://system.spektrix.com/demo1/website/ChooseSeats.aspx?EventInstanceId=8813&ChooseAttendee=true
This will automatically redirect to the same ChooseSeats page once an attendee (owner) is selected.
All Events
Alternatively, if you want to allow Facilitated Booking on all Events, you can access the iframe directly, before the start of the booking path. For example where you currently link to your ‘What’s On’ page, you might add a second option so that you have one link for anyone booking for themself, and a separate link for anyone booking on behalf of someone else.
Here’s an example URL to provide to your web developer:
https://system.spektrix.com/demo1/website/secure/attendee/choose?forwardTo=/demo1/website/eventlist.aspx
Here, it needs to be specified which page to redirect to once an attendee (owner) is chosen. This can be any web page, but using the example above it would make sense to use your ‘What’s On’ page.
Memberships
If you want to allow Facilitated Booking for Memberships as well, you can amend the URL in much the same way as the first option above. Here’s what to provide to your web developer:
Append a ChooseAttendee=true parameter to the Memberships page. For example:
https://system.spektrix.com/demo1/website/Memberships.aspx?ChooseAttendee=true
This will automatically redirect to the Memberships page once an attendee (owner) is selected.
Customising website text
There are two places during the Facilitated Booking path where you can customise the text being displayed - on the Choose Attendees page and in the Basket.
On the Choose Attendee page you can add custom text directly underneath the page header:
On the Basket page you can add custom text underneath the header and above the Savings section. This can include the owner’s name, automatically pulled through based on what was chosen on the Choose Attendee page:
By default, these pages don’t have any text in these locations. If you would like to add any custom text then please contact the Spektrix Support team with details of what you would like to be added.
Confirmation emails
It’s also possible to include information about both the owner and facilitator in order confirmation emails. Please get in touch with the Spektrix Support team if you would like to discuss how this works, and exactly what can be included in confirmation emails.
Making Facilitated Bookings
Once a Relationship Type has been set up to allow Facilitated Bookings, it will be possible to make any new order a facilitated order in both the Sales or Fundraising interfaces and online. The process works slightly differently depending on whether a booking is made in Spektrix or on your website, so we’ve detailed each method separately.
In Spektrix
When making Facilitated Bookings in Spektrix, you always add the owner to the basket and then subsequently select the facilitator.
Make the booking as you normally would, but with these additional steps:
Once you have placed the owner into the basket, select the Edit Facilitator option from the drop-down below the customer’s name.
This will lead you to a Select facilitator popup, where anyone already in a facilitating relationship with the owner will appear alongside the option to add a New Facilitator.
If opting to add a new facilitator, you will be prompted to select or add a customer via a standard Find Customer popup, then create a relationship between that person and the owner. Once a facilitator has been selected, they will then be visible on the order.
Making Facilitated Bookings online works the other way round, in that the facilitator needs to log in first, and then choose who the owner should be. This way, the owner’s details can be used for eligibility purposes before seats are chosen, allowing their details to power promo codes, offers, lock eligibility and so on.
This page also offers the option of choosing Someone else, and creating a new customer record. This only captures a small amount of information:
- First Name
- Last Name
- Relationship with the attendee
Setting up a new account in this way creates a standard, active customer record in Spektrix, which is not active online (and therefore doesn’t require an email address, or need a password setting), with the relevant relationship already applied. No other information is recorded at this point - unless you have date of birth set to be required for new account, in which case it will be a required field here - although that customer record subsequently acts in exactly the same way as any other customer.
NOTE: because no email address is gathered, a new customer record created in this manner can be a duplicate - so it’s worth making sure you have an effective process in place to manage potential duplicates, and that you keep this in mind during that process. The potential duplicates process needs to work slightly differently for accounts created in this way - please check this article for more information.
The rest of the booking process will proceed in the usual manner - as with Facilitated Bookings made in Spektrix, the facilitator will receive a confirmation email but is able to use the owner’s details for any further eligibility purposes.
Viewing Orders
Orders which have been made using Facilitated Booking appear in almost exactly the same way as any other order, with the addition of a small amount of information regarding its facilitation.
Looking at the Order Details page, the only difference is that it will display Facilitated by and the facilitator’s name on the right hand side of the customer section - similar to an order that has been made on behalf of an Organisation:
When looking in a customer’s order history, you will see either Facilitated by and the facilitator name...
...or On behalf of and the owner’s name...
Reporting
Orders made using Facilitated Booking will have slightly different report metrics, because rather than needing just a single customer’s Title, First Name, Last Name etc. they need to record that information for both facilitator and owner.
Depending on what type of report or customer list that you’re using, you may find some additional metrics available as a result. Here’s a rundown of what’s available and where.
Analysis and Sales reports
If you are building reports using either the Analysis or Sales report types, you will find output metrics related to Facilitated Booking within the Customer metrics group.
Available metrics are:
- Facilitator Email Address
- Facilitator First Name
- Facilitator Id
- Facilitator Last Name
- Facilitator Mobile Number
- Facilitator Name
- Facilitator Phone Number
- Facilitator Title
- Owner Email Address
- Owner First Name
- Owner Id
- Owner Last Name
- Owner Mobile Number
- Owner Name
- Owner Phone Number
- Owner Title
- Relationship Email Address
As you can see from the image above, these are instead of the standard Name, Phone Number etc. fields. Other report types, such as Accounting or Customer reports, do not contain Facilitator or Owner fields, but rather the standard fields.
Booking and Purchasing segments
Facilitators and Owners work slightly differently in Customer Lists. Rather than there being separate metrics, there is instead an option to choose which role within the order that you want to look for, once you’ve selected your initial metrics and moved onto the second, statistics page.
This applies to Booking and Purchasing segments only. Here’s how that looks
In a Booking segment:
In a Purchasing segment:
In each of these segments, you just need to select whether you want to include the owner or facilitator of the orders that are included in your Customer List.
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If you have further questions about Facilitated Booking or would like to discuss anything in more detail, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Spektrix Support team.