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Maturing their infrastructure for greater scale
Since it was founded in 2012, Lyte has transformed the ticketing landscape for live events. Its platform helps event organisers fill their seats, while making it easy for fans to buy, sell and return tickets. The company’s ability to make noise in a notoriously tough marketplace is worthy of a mic drop.
To stay ahead of the competition, Lyte proactively takes on all the challenges that emerge as they scale. One issue that required special focus was a legacy tech stack. They had a patchwork of disconnected platforms and no unified hub for managing the customer journey.
Director of Business Operations James Byrne explains, “All our different departments had gone off and bought their own platforms, so we had 12 to 15 different, siloed SaaS solutions coming out of our ears!”
Duplicating work through lack of alignment
With multiple teams using their own specialist platforms in silos, work was disorganised and labour sometimes duplicated. James describes day-to-day operations back then as “well-intentioned chaos”.
“As an enthusiastic start-up, everyone just wanted to execute, execute, execute. But without departments interconnecting, work was convoluted and disorganised. People would work on something. Then it would land with another department and they'd say: ‘We already did this two weeks ago.’ So we had a lot of duplication and crossover affecting our productivity.”
Improving post-sale customer management
One specific disconnect was causing huge frustration. Lyte was managing its events in Asana and the fan experience in ZenDesk. With critical data disconnected and information hard to find, managing customer interactions became quite overwhelming.
“Our fan experience team was completely siloed and they weren’t getting critical information about events,” says James. “The first time they’d hear about a cancellation was when a customer called for a refund. Then they’d have to stop, manually reach out to other teams to find an answer, and then go back out to the customer. They couldn’t provide the proactive support customers wanted.”
In the worst examples, this led to unhappy customers and created a disconcerting volume of churn.
Harnessing HubSpot for happier customers
Lyte engaged solutions partner Fuelius and implemented HubSpot CRM to usher in a new era for the business. The complete CRM platform gives Lyte all the tools to connect their teams, streamline customer service, create a smoother experience and grow efficiently.
Because live events are the nucleus of Lyte’s business—which every department touches—they create each one as a custom object in HubSpot. As soon as a deal is signed, the event is automatically created. Each team has a specific set of tasks associated with that event and can see exactly where they fit into the overall onboarding and lifecycle management process.
James says, “Clear tasks and actions are in place, which have to be completed for that event to progress to the next stage. This ensures our pipeline moves smoothly, with automations pushing the process through hand-off to launch, to live, to settlement. This holistic approach ensures our clients feel truly valued and supported from the moment they embark on their journey with us.”
Supporting a culture of accountability
HubSpot gives every team—from marketing to operations, and customer success to fan experience—a central source of truth. This creates and encourages more accountability from everyone.
“With HubSpot, it’s clear when one team has done their job and the baton is passed over to another, so people know when it becomes their responsibility,” says James. “You don't get that bleed anymore where someone can’t see if something’s been done, so they decide to pick it up and do all of it."
This clear division of responsibilities prevents work being duplicated, making the business more organised and efficient. Customers are also clear who they need to speak to in different circumstances.
James says, “If customers have a problem with an event, they go to a technical manager, where before they might have contacted the salesperson who sold them the package. If they want to add new products, they’ll go to their success manager. So there’s added value to us all being in one place and understanding our responsibilities.”
Streamlining the M&A process
HubSpot further proved its mettle when Lyte acquired complementary business, Festicket. The acquisition was a smart strategic move. It enabled Lyte to offer unified services, diversify their revenue streams, find cost synergies and provide greater value to customers.
But before Lyte could unlock all that latent value, it needed to unify Festicket’s CRM with its own.
While it was a complex task to migrate large volumes of data, integrate teams and processes, and amalgamate workflows, hands-on support from HubSpot enabled a smoooth process. Lyte had a single, unified CRM inside three months.
James says, “HubSpot helped us become a unified organisation quicker than we ever could have imagined, enabling us to provide a consistent, high-quality service across the board.”
Unlocking data-driven opportunities
Before HubSpot, Lyte was stuck inside a data black hole. With key insights hidden away in silos, they signed deals based on their best intuition. And while many succeeded, some delivered disappointing ROI.
Today, they use HubSpot’s analytics tools to measure and understand how events and deals are performing. They spot trends and identify whether deals are profitable. From there, they stay laser focused on the best opportunities to maximise revenue growth and profitability.
James says, “HubSpot’s rich and expansive analytics have been nothing short of transformative for Lyte. We have an array of data-driven methodologies to better understand and cater to our customers. This new level of understanding has been a cornerstone in our continuing journey of success.”
Contented customers and lower service costs
With HubSpot, Lyte has streamlined its internal operations and built more aligned, efficient and productive teams. A corresponding increase in customer satisfaction gives them a strong springboard for future success.
Lyte measures First Contact Resolutions as its primary KPI for customer satisfaction. Before HubSpot, they resolved just 63% of service tickets at the first contact. Even on those occasions, 36% were later reopened by the customer.
With HubSpot, those numbers are transformed. Some 73% of requests are now resolved in a single interaction. And just 4% are reopened. That’s a major improvement, which boosts their brand reputation and retention.
Customers are happier, because it takes so much less effort to have their issues solved. This also reduces customer service costs, which benefits Lyte’s bottom line.
James says, “Our team has all the information to answer customers’ queries without coming off the platform, or having to chase answers from other departments. That’s the biggest win for us—just having information to hand.”
3% churn and a refined perspective
Today, Lyte achieves remarkably low customer churn. They’re currently as low as 3%, which is well below the standard benchmark for technology platforms.
Thanks to HubSpot’s analytics tools, they measure different types of churn, including products and events. With more nuanced data, they tackle each type of churn independently and strategise the most effective improvements.
James says, “HubSpot changed the game for us in terms of measuring churn. We've shifted to a more detailed analysis and our refined perspective helps us identify specific areas in our offerings that may need fine-tuning.”
HubSpot also helps Lyte create ‘positive’ churn and grow more efficiently. They look at customer relationships bringing low margins, then make a call whether to churn that deal and pivot to another with better ROI.
So they get more ROI for the same effort, thanks to HubSpot.
The best CRM he’s worked with
James has worked with several CRMs in his career, and rates HubSpot number one.
“I've worked with different CRMs, including Salesforce, Zoho and all in between, and there’s never been one I've been more interconnected with than HubSpot,” he says. “HubSpot has transformed the way we manage customer interactions and taken our customer service to new heights. The changes we've seen in our strategies and the boost in customer satisfaction speak volumes about the influence of HubSpot's products and features on our operations.”
