eBay automates ticket buyer & seller communications with Twilio

StubHub, an eBay company, is the world's largest ticket marketplace, enabling fans to buy and sell tickets to tens of thousands of sports, concert, theater and other live entertainment events.

The lights go down, and the crowd goes wild.

In matching ticket buyers and sellers, StubHub strives for a timely and positive exchange between parties. Once buyers decide on a purchase, StubHub confirms that the seller still has the tickets available, and is ready to sell them. Buyers in the meantime are waiting until the confirmation comes through before the transaction can complete.

StubHub aims for seamless customer transactions, and the ability to close the sale before the tickets expire. But having to complete a final confirmation of ticket availability adds a delay in the process. “In cases where sellers are not able to confirm ticket availability, we had to resort to manually calling sellers for transactions to go through…a cumbersome and tedious process to say the least,” explains John Whelan, Director of Customer Service at StubHub.

The show must go on.

Recognizing the need to speed up the seller confirmation process, StubHub turned to Twilio. Instead of manually calling sellers to see if tickets are still available for sale, a laborious process, StubHub implemented an automated solution that calls sellers to inform them of a pending sale. This way, sellers who happen to be away from an internet connection can quickly and easily know that a sale is pending, and by pressing a key, confirm that tickets are still available.

“Tickets only have value up until the event,” explains John. “If we miss the window to sell them, everyone loses. By using Twilio, we are able to close more transactions helping both ticket buyers and sellers.”