Weekend 1 2022
We made the triumphant return to the desert, and you all immediately started losing stuff.
2022 Weekend 1 by the numbers (4/22/2022 12:00PM)
New to Coachella Lost and Found in 2022
Protect with the Liff App has a whole new look, and a lot more function.
Now Protect more than just your phone with Coachella Lost and Found Tags (great for keys and bags).
Our Article from 2019...
Indio, California the city of Festivals. Well technically, Chicago has more major festivals in the city proper and surrounding area than anywhere else in the United states, but Chicago has a few other things going on so we’ll let Indio have this one.
What's the Coachella Music Festival?
“The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival (commonly called Coachella or the Coachella Festival) is an annual music and arts festival held at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, in the Coachella Valley in the Colorado Desert.
It was co-founded by Paul Tollett and Rick Van Santen in 1999, and is organized by Goldenvoice, a subsidiary of AEG Presents.” – Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival Wikipedia Article
Why Lost and Found at Coachella?
The Coachella Music Festival is one of the most significant events in the United States. It attracts as many as 250,000 attendees across the two weekends and subsequently has a massive lost property problem. But as the jewel of the festival industry, the forward-thinking Goldenvoice production team made the smart decision to turn to technology and a little Lost and Found startup called Liff Happens to fix the problem.
So in March of 2019, a plan was crafted to help Coachella attendees avoid the pain of lost property.
Skipping loss!
Like many other types of organizations, your customers are not well versed in the specific operations or processes at your property. Lack of information is especially evident for Lost and Found and even more so at a music festival.
So the Liff Happens crew, the Coachella Guest Services team, and Goldenvoice marketing teamed up to try and educate the customers ahead of time about how Lost and Found works. More importantly, we were able to give the customers the ability to protect their stuff in case it goes missing.
Protect Preregistration
During the lead up to the event, we introduced Protect Lost and Found registration. Now the attendees can register their contact information with the property they care about, like a phone. Protect has a ton of added benefits to the customer, like:
- QR Code that tells finders how to turn the item in.
- Protects the owners personal and contact information
- Reduces the chances of loss
- Cuts average return time down to minutes
Surrendered Items: preventing Loss of a different variety.
Misplacing an item is not the only way for an attendee to lose property. The Coachella Guest Services team was looking to reduce a typical customer experience issue, Surrendered Items.
Surrendered items is an incredibly common festival experience. For example, a festival attendee, upon entering the festival grounds, is subject to a search for prohibited items (like drones, video cameras, weapons, and so on. A full list can be found here) by the security team. Any found prohibited items must then be given up by the attendee to access the camping or festival grounds.
Similar to going through the TSA with a bottle of water. If you want to catch your flight, you must toss the water. You’re choosing to give up or surrender that property and move on.
For a music festival, many of these items can be quite expensive or even sentimental. So the Guest Services team was looking for a way to help attendees and avoid the first in-person interaction being a detrimental loss of property.
The Liff Happens team built a module on the Liff App, creatively named “Surrendered Items.” Instead of trashing essential items, the attendee can now “Surrender” their thing to the festival to hold during the event’s duration and then pick up the item at the conclusion. Sort of a convenient coat check but not for coats. We built some neat tech features like item tracking, thermally printed labels, and keep attendees updated through email & text messages. Still, the critical part is the experience is way less of a TSA style bummer.
Returning Property In-Person
Hundreds of thousands of people a day can lead to a lot of lost stuff. Managing such large crowds can be challenging on its own, but adding in the complication of emotional distress that commonly accompanies lost property can turn any gathering into a cluster.
So we’ve broken down a few of the ways the Liff App and the Coachella Guest Services team addressed such an enormous need.
The Lost and Found Tent
The Lost and Found tent is the epicenter for loss. With 100,000 attendees possibly losing stuff, you’d expect an extensive line.
To combat that, the Liff App introduced several strategies to improve the customer experience and staff efficiency.
Self-Service Kiosks
Self-Service is a crucial tactic if the Guest Services team wants even remotely to keep up with the flood of lost property inquires.
Kiosks allow bold attendees to skip waiting in line and instead search for their missing property with a staff member. When property is found, submit a claim, verify ownership at the counter, and happily return to the music with your stuff.
Kiosks reduce lines, scale your staff, and give power to attendees to inquire at their convenience.
Expand Self-Service: Go Online
Self-Service isn’t limited to only in-person. Opening up access to the Lost and Found through the Coachella website and mobile app allowed festival attendees to check for missing property 24/7 from virtually anywhere in the world, more often the sets they didn’t want to miss.
Through the online self-service portals, Coachella was no longer interrupting the festival experience for attendees. Instead, it was empowering guests to stay connected to the process in tandem with their good times.
Property that finds you
The Coachella Guest Services and Liff Happens teams know how awful the experience can be when cherished property goes missing. Upon finding an item, the Lost and Found team wants to get it back into the owner’s hands in as short of time as possible.
Instead of waiting around for the attendee to check out the website or stop at the tent, we created a strategy to help have the item find the owner. Match Mode in the Liff App lets staff use item information to find owners’ contact information and send a message.
Attendees were thrilled with the notifications that we had their stuff, often before they even knew it was missing.
Coachella Lost and Found Postcards
The Coachella Lost and Found postcards are a great example of found property tracking down an owner.
The Liff App helps skip all the manual work. Add an item address (usually for a found wallet or ID card) and schedule a postcard to be sent. The Liff App will generate a custom branded postcard to arrive at the owner’s door with simple instructions on how to get their property back.
Returning Property by Shipment
Not all attendees were lucky enough to find their property while still on the festival grounds. Whether you didn’t realize it was missing until after leaving or the item was recovered after the festival was over, the Coachella Lost and Found team were committed to quickly reconnecting you with your found property.
For the 2019 Music Festival. The Lost and Found team implemented an aggressive shipping strategy, of course, with the help of Liff App Post-Event Support, to quickly reunite owners with the found property. As a result, hundreds of packages were successfully sent out each weekend and even during regular festival operations.
Attendees & Lost and Found
Lost and Found received “fan-mail.” The updated process improved staff efficiency and overall customer experience, helping to return more than 2,000 items in total back to owners.
Sidenote: Blackpink was, in fact, amazing, so you should check out their sets.
