As an enthusiastic people person, who genuinely cares about the needs of partners, Matt Donnelly embodies and drives the company’s attentive and hardworking attitude. Matt leads the team of specialists that train and support our partners all over the world.
In 2009, Matt graduated from Northeastern University located in Boston, with a Bachelor’s degree in Music Business Industry. Matt started his career interning in New York at a record label. Keeping his passion for music alive, Matt started his own business as a DJ called DJD PGH.
A few months later, Matt found a job post on Craigslist for ShowClix. Starting out as a Customer Care representative, Matt has seen the company grow from 6 employees to 60. He quickly became an expert at our ShowClix platform and was soon promoted to an Account Manager, and then again as our Director of Client Services.
With almost 8 years of experience working at ShowClix, Matt is an immense resource to our Client Services team. His profound knowledge of the ShowClix platform brings valuable insight to help improve each of our partner’s experiences.
Client Services is responsible for educating our partners on how to gather event intelligence, promote events through the admin, and provide excellent support. How do you think our platform helps to ensure the success of our partners?
The ShowClix platform has been built up over the years to accommodate events organizations from various industries. During that time, our product team has done an excellent job of building features that benefit all of our partners, creating a robust arsenal of tools for every organizer to choose from. This allows our Client Services team to get creative with how we support our partners. Nothing excites us more than being presented with a challenge, coming together to brainstorm solutions and implementing the one that allows our partners to plan a successful event.
As the Director of Client Services, you manage our Clients Success teams all over the world. How do you nurture talent?
I have an awesome team of people with a diverse mixture of backgrounds; musicians, venue managers, box office personnel and downright tech geeks. Some have worked their way up through the ranks at ShowClix over the years, while others have been hired from the outside and learned the ropes by jumping in head first. Most amazingly, some have come to work for us after being partners for many years! No matter how they get here, my retention strategy is to keep them all challenged while setting them up for success. We may also have some fun…sometimes.
What is the most exciting part about working in Client Services?
Working in Client Services is exciting because everyday is different. I could list out 20 things that we could be called on to do any given day but I have no idea which ones we will be asked to do day to day, which keep us on our toes. The most exciting part of our job is being a part of the amazing experiences that our partners create. Whether we are on-site helping out, watching a recap video or just reading comments online, it’s insanely rewarding to know that your hard work helped create an experience that affected so many people in a positive way.
You’ve been with the company for almost 8 years. Would you share one of your favorite ShowClix memories with us?
ShowClix is so amazing because of the team of passionate people we employ – it’s one of the main reasons I’ve been here so long! Because of that, I’d have to say that one of my favorite memories was when we launched mobile ticket delivery back in 2011. We worked with Billboard Magazine to offer only mobile tickets to a secret LMFAO show in New York City. Our team traveled to the event to ensure a smooth admissions process, which is exactly what we delivered. Everyone from our CEO to our president to our mobile engineer to myself was on-site for the event, which was what made it so awesome. That was 5 years ago now and it was a big deal for the company. Ever since, we’ve been scaling up our Event Operations department to handle more events on a larger scale. I’m excited to see where we’ll be working in the future!
We know that outside of work you are a local Pittsburgh DJ (aka DJD). Where did your passion for music come from?
I have been around music all my life. My father played guitar while I was growing up so I took that up from an early age. I have been in a band since I was in 6th grade playing everything from blues to rock to pop punk to metal. When I went away to Boston for college, I started working for a DJ company around New England. My roommate and I spent hours every night learning how to mix music and it reignited my love for finding music and entertaining people. After rocking bars and parties for most of my college career, I returned home and immediately starting DJing anywhere I could around town. I’m proud to say that 8 years later I’m still just as excited about DJing as I was when I started over a decade ago!