Taylor Elliot
VP of Marketing & Customer Experience
Customer experience is having a moment. Every industry is thinking about how to serve customers better, simplify interactions, and remove friction from complex processes. The events industry is no different–except for one thing that makes our situation a bit unique.
We have two customer experiences happening in the same room at the same time.
General service contractors like Shepard work with organizers — the people responsible for putting on an event — and exhibitors — the companies investing in a booth presence and the staff resources to compete for attendees’ attention.
My job as VP of Marketing & Customer Experience puts me at the intersection of both. I help shape how Shepard shows up at industry events, which means I’ve also been on the exhibitor side myself. And that experience has changed how I think about what kind of support our customers need.
The value of the dual perspective
In our 120 year history Shepard has supported organizers and exhibitors across every type of event — from trade shows and conferences to corporate meetings spanning dozens of markets and hundreds of venues. That breadth of exposure gives our team a unique vantage point. We’ve seen what works, what doesn’t, where the pressure points tend to emerge, and where the opportunities lie across a wide range of events.
That institutional knowledge shapes how I think about customer experience, and it’s been sharpened by firsthand experience on both sides of the equation.
As an organizer, I had a hand in designing SandboxLIVE, Shepard’s community engagement event. I also help shape how Shepard shows up at industry events as an exhibitor. Last year at Expo! Expo!, we celebrated our 120th anniversary with a confetti cannon in our booth. It was the exclamation point on a brand campaign we’d built around the milestone, starting with a social media push and culminating in the in-person celebration. The effect rippled across the show floor in a way no banner or digital display could match, with all of our industry peers in attendance enjoying the sense of occasion with us.
This experience sits with me whenever I think about what challenges our exhibitors face. We had the advantage of knowing exactly what we wanted to accomplish and the expertise to execute it in a city and venue we know well–and it still required coordination, planning, and an experienced team behind it.
Understanding what it feels like to be in the organizer’s shoes and the exhibitor’s shoes informs how we build and continue to refine the support systems our clients rely on to deliver seamless event experiences.
But personal experience only takes you so far. The fuller picture comes from listening carefully to the people we serve, and paying close attention to what the data tells us about how they behave.
Listening to the people and the data
Organizers and exhibitors will tell you different things because they’re solving different problems, and both perspectives are worth taking seriously on their own terms.
Organizer feedback has shaped how we think about the planning process — specifically, where lack of visibility can leave organizers feeling uncertain as to whether everything has been accounted for. That’s part of what led us to develop the Organizer App, which gives planners a clearer window into event operations as they unfold before and during the event.
On the creative side, we learned that some organizers wanted a creative partner, not just execution support. We created the Inspiration Playbook to share popular activation concepts and design ideas drawn from events across our portfolio, putting our institutional knowledge to work for our clients.
Exhibitor feedback has tended to be more operational — questions about deadlines, freight, ordering, what to expect on-site. Over time, patterns in that feedback pointed us toward specific, recurring points of confusion, and that’s what shaped how we built out the Exhibitor Support Center, the FAQ portal, and the exhibitor video library.
Operational data fills in what direct feedback doesn’t always surface. It shows us how customers actually use our digital platforms, and sometimes it challenges assumptions we didn’t realize we were making.
We know that highly personalized service matters enormously to our clients. But the data tells a more nuanced story: research from Zendesk and others indicate that more than 80% of customers will attempt to solve a problem or answer a question on their own before reaching out to a service team. That gap between the value customers place on personal touchpoints and their actual first instinct — self-service — shapes how we think about support. The goal isn’t to replace the personalized service we provide; it’s to make sure that when a customer goes looking for an answer on their own, they find one quickly.
We combine what organizers tell us, what exhibitors tell us, and what the data shows about actual behavior to get a much clearer picture than any one source alone.
Complexity is the reality of events
Complexity is the reality of events. Exhibiting at a trade show involves a level of coordination that’s easy to underestimate from the outside. In many ways, the exhibitor journey shares similarities with other complex service industries.
Consider flying. A traveler purchases a ticket digitally, checks in through a mobile app, arrives at the airport, checks baggage, navigates security, boards the plane, and expects their luggage to arrive at the destination. Along the way they interact with self-service tools, digital platforms, and in-person support teams — each step part of a larger system designed to guide them through a complex process.
The exhibitor experience works the same way. Exhibitors have to manage freight shipments, coordinate booth construction, navigate venue requirements, track deadlines, and try to ensure the brand experience they planned in a conference room actually materializes on a show floor three time zones away.
The challenge isn’t eliminating complexity entirely. It’s designing systems that help customers move through it with clarity and confidence.
Designing systems that support events
At Shepard, that perspective has led us to invest in digital tools designed to create greater visibility and coordination across the event lifecycle.
We already mentioned the Organizer App, which allows event organizers to track and manage every step of the planning process in one place.
BrandView serves the organizer side as well, giving planners clearer visibility into sponsorship opportunities at their venues and a more structured way to manage that part of the event.
ExhibitorPro gives exhibitors a single platform to manage their orders and access event details, reducing the back-and-forth that slows down the planning process and making it easier to arrive on-site prepared.
When the right information is easier to find and act on, fewer things fall through the cracks for exhibitors, for organizers, and for the teams supporting them.
The creative side matters too. Through resources like our Inspiration Playbook, Creative Gallery, and the Shepard blog, we aim to provide the inspiration and strategic guidance that helps brands elevate how they show up on the floor.
Taken together, these tools reflect a broader belief: customer experience isn’t defined by any single platform or interaction–it’s shaped by the system surrounding the event as a whole.
Looking ahead
The events industry is entering a period of meaningful evolution. Customer expectations are rising on both sides of the equation. The companies that will serve this industry well are the ones that understand that the organizer and exhibitor outcomes rise together.
At Shepard, we talk about how to improve our customer experiences every day, through the support systems we design, through feedback, and what the data tells us. It doesn’t take the complexity out of events, but that’s not the goal. Because the future of customer experience in our industry will not be defined by the elimination of complexity. It will be defined by how well we design systems that help customers navigate that complexity with clarity and confidence.
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