Community Ticketing and Customer Service Assistant (fixed term)
End date: Friday 29 August 2025
Location: Based in our central Edinburgh office
Background
The idea at the heart of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is simple: anyone with a desire to perform and an avenue willing to host them is welcome. No individual or committee determines who can or cannot perform at the Fringe.
It all began in 1947 with eight companies – six of them from Scotland – taking a risk, turning up uninvited and performing on the ‘fringe’ of the inaugural Edinburgh International Festival. Over 75 years later, the Fringe has grown to become one of the greatest platforms for creative freedom in the world, second only to the Olympics in terms of global ticketed events. In 2024, 3,745 shows took place in 296 venues across Edinburgh.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society was founded by artists to nurture and uphold the Fringe's values of inclusivity, experimentation, and imagination. We exist to support, advise, and encourage everyone who wants to participate in the Fringe, provide information and assistance to audiences, and celebrate the Fringe and what it stands for all over the world.
The primary responsibility of the Community Ticketing & Customer Service Assistant is to provide an exceptionally high standard of service to a wide range of customers of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society. Under the guidance of the Box Office Operations Manager, the successful applicant will be responsible for answering general festival inquiries as well as assisting customers from community groups, group bookings, and resolving a range of customer service issues.
This position reports to the Box Office Operations Manager.
Role and responsibilities
The successful candidate will perform a wide range of duties, including but not limited to:
* Assist group bookings, including school and corporate groups over the phone and email, including speaking to the Finance team to arrange invoices.
* Assist community groups through our Community Ticketing Initiative and Fringe Days Out schemes to book tickets.
* Monitor the Fringe general information email and phone line.
* Deal with customer issues, queries, and complaints in person, over the phone, over email, and occasionally via social media.
* Abide by pre-defined Fringe Box Office policies and procedures to ensure the professional, efficient, and effective operation of the Customer Services department.
* Visit community and school groups in person in order to answer queries and assist with bookings.
* Communicate to customers to inform them of show changes or cancellations and issuing refunds/exchanges.
* Assist the Access Bookings Coordinator in processing bookings for customers with specific access requirements.
* Offer advice to the Box Office Assistants on how best to deal with customer queries.
* Assist customers to collect physical tickets if not able to utilize e-ticketing.
* Assist with other festivals or events that are ticketed through the 180 Box Office where necessary.
Person specification
* Experience in a demanding customer-facing role.
* Excellent communication skills, both oral and written.
* Ability to work calmly and efficiently in a high-pressure environment and be flexible and responsive to changing demands on time.
* A polite, professional, and confident manner when dealing with the public.
* The ability to work in a team as well as using your own initiative to offer support and advice to colleagues.
* Proficient computer skills including a good working knowledge of Office 365 packages.
* Experience of working in a festival environment.
* Knowledge of general box office procedures and practices.
* Experience of working with a computerized ticketing system.
* Experience of interacting with people with additional access requirements.
Rate of pay and benefits
The rate of pay for this post is £13.10 per hour.
Normal working hours are 35 hours a week, worked from 10:00 to 18:00, Monday to Friday with a one-hour unpaid lunch break. During the festival period, the rota system will cover our opening hours of 09:00 to 21:00 between Monday and Sunday with the possibility to work six days a week from 28 July to 11 August to cover the first two weeks for the festival. Any additional hours worked will be paid at the standard hourly rate.
We are a flexible working employer and therefore are happy to discuss flexible working at any stage of the application process. We are unable to offer remote working for this position. We can offer varied start and finish times and core hours with flexibility around them.
We use positive action under section 159 of the Equality Act in relation to disability or race. This means that if we have two candidates of equal merit in our process, we will seek to take forward the D/deaf, disabled, Black, Asian, or ethnically diverse candidate in order to diversify our staff team.
The Fringe has identified six pillars of commitment around the sustainable delivery of their work, are active members of the Festivals Edinburgh Sustainability Working group, and include climate action as one of the headline targets in the Fringe development goals. As part of the commitments of this work, all Fringe staff members are expected to assist with the Fringe Society’s environmental goals and consider these in all elements of your work.
We are also committed to maintaining the open-access policy of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome applications from all sectors of the community. We are also proud to be a Disability Confident Employer and aim to successfully employ and retain disabled people and those with health conditions. We expect employees to support these commitments and to assist in their realization.
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