Daktronics Creative Services, Touring Iowa and Visiting Customers

One of the first things that customers often like to joke about when I arrive for on-site visits is, “They let you out of the office every once in a while, huh?” Spending time in the office collaborating with our project management and design team to make sure that the content we create for our customers is moving efficiently is important. Equally important is making time to get out of the office to engage with customers to discuss their game-day objectives and discover those special things that make both their teams and venues unique.

This past week, I spent time touring the great state of Iowa along with Matt Senden, Daktronics Applications Engineer, to meet with several customers. This wasn’t my first tour de Iowa, and it still amazes me that I haven’t learned my lesson by now that when you see a gas station, you stop as such amenities are not exactly plentiful along Iowa’s highways. Anyway, as I was saying, some of the customers we met with are currently in the process of installing new displays and some have been long-time customers. We enjoyed each of these visits all the same though.

In today’s world with all of the advancements in technology, it’s astounding how much we can all get accomplished by phone and email, but no matter how advanced technology becomes, those mediums will never be able to provide the valuable insight that can be gained from talking to someone face to face. It’s incredibly valuable for me to see the environment where displays are located first hand, understand each unique fan base, see the control rooms and understand the overall workflow as well as all the other behind the scenes elements that contribute to the overall game-day production. As part of the Daktronics Professional Services team, myself and our team are focused on providing services that enhance our client’s abilities to engage and entertain their audiences.

We often like to argue that we have the best jobs within Daktronics, as we get to make the displays come to life with dynamic and impactful content. I genuinely appreciate and enjoy these customer visits as it’s inspiring to see what our customers are doing with their displays and production, and also helps me to better serve and understand customers to ensure we are offering value added services to help support their vision.

So, despite spending the first night of the trip congregating in the hotel lobby near Iowa City because of a TORNADO WARNING, it was a successful week (Since when does Iowa have tornadoes in MARCH?!). My Snapchat story of that hotel lobby pajama party filled with other hotel patrons doesn’t come close to how hilarious and bizarre that situation actually was. Thus, we all made it out alive without hail damage to our vehicles and it does make for a pretty good story, so no complaints here!

Written by Ellen Sandager, Creative Services Account Manager.