As chief experience officer, Jessica Fickenscher’s role is to see the sport through the fans’ eyes. So she makes sure that everyone has a good time at Speedway Motorsports facilities, and that’s good business.

When someone goes to a racing event—or any event—the totality of the experience is the single biggest factor in determining whether or not that person comes back. Sometimes just one thing can ruin an otherwise entirely positive day, and that can influence an overall impression. That’s why it’s smart business to have someone whose job is to ensure that the customer experience is as good as it can be, from the parking lot to the social media reach.

Jessica Fickenscher has the unique job title of chief experience officer at Speedway Motorsports. The company, founded by Bruton Smith, owns and operates 11 notable tracks such as Charlotte Motor Speedway, Sonoma Raceway, Texas Motor Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and Dover Motor Speedway, among others. Her job is to, as she puts it, “oversee anything that the fan would touch.”

In practice, Fickenscher helps deliver the company’s best-in-class fan experiences by keeping her eyes and ears on every track, every initiative, and every big event. She crosses all boundaries and represents the customer within the company. As if all that wasn’t enough, Fickenscher is the managing director of the non-profit Speedway Children’s Charities. She graduated from Belmont Abbey College in 1998 with a degree in Sports Management and Business Administration. We caught up to ask her how she makes Speedway Motorsports events special.

PRI: As simply as you can put it, what does a chief experience officer actually do?

Fickenscher: I oversee anything that the fan would touch when they get on our property. That can be from the time they’re in the parking lots to enter up to the time they leave the parking lots, and everything in between. The ticket buying experience, the getting here experience, what to know before they get here, and what to do once they’re here. Food and beverage is a big part of that as well. Pretty much anything the fan touches, I’ve got my hands in somehow.

PRI: That has to be a challenge with all the different kinds of speedways all over the country and then Sonoma Raceway. The experience at these different places is going to be very different.

Fickenscher: Absolutely. It is definitely a different experience at each track. Each track is obviously unique to their area, and they’ve all got something special. For example, New Hampshire has a lot of race fans, and that’s one of our biggest areas in terms of camping. So the camping experience has to be spot-on. At New Hampshire, you’re in a little bit more remote area as opposed to Las Vegas, Atlanta, Dallas, where you’re in more urban city areas where there are things to do at night. So there’s a lot of programming that will go on at New Hampshire Motor Speedway for example, and the campers love all the stuff that we do for them. Once the racing’s over, we do a lot of fun things.

PRI: How do you create an experience that really resonates with different generations, or is there any difference at all between older and younger fans?

Fickenscher: There’s definitely a difference, and we definitely see a lot of things where people are coming with their grandparents and their parents because they came with their parents a generation ago. So we do have something for everybody. We try to activate a great kid zone for people who have younger kids. The music that we do, we try to entice the 40- to 60-year-olds, so there’s definitely something for everybody. A lot of our tracks have more social areas where college kids want to go and hang out and have fun.

We try to appeal to all the ages, and we try to keep the traditional things traditional for our longtime fans. They like their same seats; they like to sit next to the same people they’ve been sitting next to for 30 years. That might be the only time they get to see those people, so we definitely want to make sure there’s something for everybody.

PRI: Diversity is a huge topic whenever I’m talking to track managers or promoters. Is there a way that promoters or racing series or the tracks themselves can craft a welcoming experience where everybody feels like they have a place at a track?

Fickenscher: Yeah, absolutely. We definitely welcome all race fans. We want everybody to come and experience what we have to offer. We want people from all walks of life to experience the race, and we work really hard with NASCAR on that. They’ve got a dedicated diversity and inclusion group, so we partner with them to make sure we’re in lockstep and they get the same great experience at all the NASCAR tracks and not just one versus another. It’s really important for us to walk hand-in-hand with NASCAR in that area.

PRI: How do you measure your success? Can you put that into numbers?

Fickenscher: Success for us is people in the grandstands, and we had a good stretch where we had six sellouts in a row. Success for us is people renewing their tickets, and our renewals have been the highest that they’ve been since even before COVID-19. We work really hard on that, and if we can renew somebody, that is definitely how we benchmark success.

PRI: Speaking of putting people in seats, how did North Wilkesboro Speedway become the location for the 2023 NASCAR All-Star race?

Fickenscher: About a year ago we had Dale Earnhardt Jr. come out and race in this series that he now owns, called the CARS Tour series. The track had been dormant for a long time. It was absolutely amazing that we had people in that place, and I think NASCAR and Speedway Motorsports and my boss Marcus Smith thought we might have something here. We came to the decision pretty quickly. It seems like there’s something about nostalgia. People like everything that’s old right now, and NASCAR’s 75th anniversary is this year. We said, ‘Look, if we can get this track back up and operating and safe for the drivers, would you guys consider us having the All-Star race here?’ Without a doubt on NASCAR’s side, they said, ‘Absolutely.’ So we had about eight months to get ready, and that’s how it came about. It was pretty wild.

PRI: Do you have plans for North Wilkesboro in the future?

Fickenscher: We have a modified race coming up on September 30th. [Editor’s note: This interview occurred in late August.] We’ve got a car show coming up on October 21st, and then we have to do a repave. The track hasn’t been touched since the 1980s, and it’s definitely time for a repave. We’re going to do that in the early months. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate with us in the mountains, and then we are going to have a NASCAR race there next year. I don’t know the exact dates yet because we’re still working on the 2024 schedule, but that should be coming out soon. But North Wilkesboro is back and operating. We put a lot into it, and we’re ready to debut it to the world again.

PRI: In your career, you have spoken about the importance of asking for help to achieve a goal. Why do you think people may be reluctant to ask for assistance?

Fickenscher: I certainly am not reluctant to ask for help. Once we found out that we were having the NASCAR All-Star race, for example, our CEO came to me and said, ‘Hey, why don’t you head up this project?’ I felt like I had the first-round draft pick, and I just picked all the best people out of the company and said, ‘I need you on my team.’ I surrounded myself with the best in the business, and it was a success. It worked. I think people might be afraid to ask for help because they don’t want to seem like they can’t accomplish a job themselves and maybe it diminishes their value. I think that’s a silly way to look at it, but that’s probably one of the reasons why someone might not ask for help.

PRI: When you ask for help, there’s always the possibility that someone will say no. Is there a way to ask that produces results when you go and ask someone for help?

Fickenscher: We have a race that we do at COTA, and with the All-Star race, we take outside teams and we put them in to help execute the event. You need to make sure that they’ve got the bandwidth to do that. You don’t want to overwork somebody or stress them out. You have to work with their supervisors to make sure that they can do it, because they’re moving away from home for a few weeks or sometimes a month. So just making sure they’ve got that good work-life balance and making sure that they’re being taken care of while they’re working on these projects is a big thing.

PRI: You’ve talked about viewing the event through the fan’s eyes. How do you do that? How do you put yourself in the fan’s position?

Fickenscher: We take a ton of surveys with our fans, and I personally go through every single one we have. I mean, we have some that will have thousands of comments back, and we really go through them, and we listen to them, and we really do implement the changes that need to be made. So I personally feel like getting the fan feedback and acting on that feedback is the best way to go about it.

PRI: Do you ever get negative pushback from things like diversity, equity, and inclusion?

Fickenscher: No, not really. The biggest thing people complain about is traffic. Maybe food prices are a little high, and at Las Vegas they can’t bring in their coolers.

I think generally, no matter where you go, you’re going to hear complaints about food prices nowadays.

But like I said, the biggest thing is traffic. People want to get in and out a little bit easier. You also want to listen to what’s going really well, and what people like because you don’t want to take that away. For example, we know pre-race activities are super important. Having concerts is super important, so we want to make sure we keep enhancing those things.

PRI: Many promoters are bringing in music acts and other entertainment on top of racing, or even calling a race weekend a festival. What do you think is happening there? Is it that racing isn’t enough, or is it just that we’re so used to having these all-inclusive experiences that we just expect that now?

Fickenscher: I think going to a race is so much more than a stick-and-ball event as an experience. There are multiple days. You’ve got qualifying and practice and the Xfinity Series and Truck race and the Cup race, so there’s not a lot of downtime. I’ve been doing this for over 25 years, and there’s always been concerts. I think it’s just part of the whole experience. It’s definitely not something new. I think during COVID, we obviously didn’t do it so much and people missed it, but it’s definitely something that’s always been expected.

PRI: Did you have any mentors as you were coming up and learning to do this job? Or did you invent the whole chief experience officer thing from scratch?

Fickenscher: I definitely had a lot of good mentors along the way, but our CEO, Marcus Smith, saw some of the things that I was interested in and the things that I would gravitate toward, and some of the things I was already doing while I was vice president of special projects. I don’t know that he created it because I have seen the title in other places, but he decided to give me that title.

PRI: Can you point to a mistake that you made at any point in your career where you learned from it and eventually benefited and got some wisdom out of it?

Fickenscher: Every day. We always learn from our mistakes, but honestly a big one was thinking I could do things without asking for help. I can’t name one specific area, but I know there have been a couple times where I probably could have done a lot better job if I would’ve asked for help along the way. I think back in my earlier days, just not having good work-home-life balance, that definitely was a learning lesson for me, and I definitely have achieved that now.

PRI: Where do you think motorsports is going in the future?

Fickenscher: I think we’re in a really great spot. Our ratings have been fantastic. I know both the NASCAR tracks and Speedway Motorsports tracks are having great events. Most of them this year have been sellouts. I think the racing has been great. I’m excited about the future. I think the new car has been awesome. Then there are the different forms of racing. You’ve got the Supercross coming up here at Charlotte Motor Speedway, for example. We sold that out in a matter of minutes, so people are hungry for it, and it’s definitely not going away anytime soon.

PRI: What do you think will be different in 10 years, if anything?

Fickenscher: I think maybe video streaming and how you access racing could be different. I feel like the fan experience will be somewhat similar, probably with some new fancy ways to order food on your phone or do different things like that. But I think the biggest thing we’re going to see is the broadcasting and network side of it and the different streaming platforms where you’ll be able to view racing.

PRI: With Formula E we’re seeing FIA get into electric racing. Do you think that has a future in circle track racing?

Fickenscher: Yeah, I do. That’s very, very popular. Even some of the young drivers, that’s how they’re cutting their teeth, being in a simulator, and eSports is huge right now. I know that there have been rumblings about [stock cars going electric], and I have definitely learned to never say never. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised; NASCAR’s pretty forward-thinking.

PRI: What message would you want to leave with our readers?

Fickenscher: I think our sport’s great. I think it’s healthy. I think we’ve got the most talented people in the world working in it. That’s probably about it.