I had hoped that, after many years of lurking on this forum in silence, my first post would be a positive one. But after yet another complete shambles with season tickets not working last Saturday I just had to have a rant. I could have put this on to the Season Tickets thread, but it seems to me that the whole malaise goes much deeper than that one incident, it is symptomatic of the apparent disinterest the club has in making its ‘customers’ experience’ a pleasant one (disregarding the events on the field of play!)
Like hundreds of others I turned up in reasonable time and tried different turnstiles and putting the card in the slot, waving it in the general direction of the green light etc, much to the annoyance of others queuing, but to no avail. The stewards are totally uninterested and treat you as if you’re trying to do something dishonest, so you trudge to the ticket office and see the huge queue of other cheated supporters. At that point you have to decide whether to join this queue which is moving at its usual glacial pace and looks like you might get in mid way through the second half or go home and watch the match in comfort and with a decent chance of getting half time refreshment.
The galling thing is that the club (like us) knew this was going to happen; they could have asked people to bring email proof of purchase, they could have put staff at each corner of the ground with links to the club system (haven’t they done this before?) After the event a competent organisation would have apologised, said they were going to put it right and offered, say, a free ticket to the Carlisle game, but no, like the stewards, they shrug and ignore the utter frustration they have caused.
You’d have thought that lockdown and Premiership money was the chance for the club to get its ‘customer-facing systems’ in order. That side of the club has had nothing to do for the past 15 months except make the buying of tickets a painless experience. What happened at the start of the season? – everything crashed. Of the 20/30 people I’ve spoken to about renewing season tickets, around half said they finally got the web link to work (I still can’t – error key 500?), but half said they had to resort to the phone or the office. But the ticket office is woefully understaffed, so you phone and get the engaged tone, you try again and still get the engaged tone. Eventually you might get through to an automated voice saying you’re 32nd in the queue or whatever, so you wait on hold. After an eternity you’re down to about 18th in the queue when the phone suddenly goes dead. So you phone again and get the engaged tone…..
So you traipse down to the Ticket Office and wait in a long and painfully slow queue. The guy next to me last week said he worked in retail and that if he offered the same level of service to his customers that SUFC do, he’d be sacked on the spot. There were only a dozen or so people before me, but it still took over half an hour before I got out of the rain and into the office. There were several staff milling about but only two serving supporters – I’d love to know what the others actually do. For many people, the whole experience of undertaking any transaction with SUFC is such a depressing and negative one. With any other organisation, or indeed football club, you just pop in or phone up and get yourself sorted. With SUFC you have to take a day off work just to make the most basic of purchases. None of us would put up with this from any other organisation we deal with, we’d take our custom (and money) elsewhere.
Another thread on here talked about how we might grow the fan base and particularly nick new supporters from across the city, but this won’t happen if we make the experience of getting to BDTBL such a difficult one.
And this malaise is not just limited to the ticket office. In fact the catering is worse. Last Saturday my eldest went down to the Kop bar area ten minutes before half time and got served five minutes into the second half. The service is so lethargic and laughably inefficient that there were fights breaking out in the increasingly frustrated queue. I know its a concession, but it would be worth so much more to the club if it maximised its income and the atrocious service does huge reputational damage to the club, particularly at events like the boxing when new punters are in the Lane. The club shop is is similarly inept – if an item is popular (the green kit?) they are just not able to get the right quantities in the right sizes at the right time. (‘It will be in after Christmas!’)
All this is not just rude and unprofessional, it loses the club millions a year in potential income. My fag packet calculation was that a half competent catering operation alone could bring in an extra seven figure sum per year. People not giving up in frustration trying to buy a season or match day ticket, would generate yet more; a Superstore which was actually super, these would all bring in significant and much needed cash. Why oh why is this multi million pound operation so reminiscent of a badly run 1980s local authority. We aspire to be a Premeirship club, but the operational infrastructure is still barely at League One level. Alongside the new left sided centre back and a midfielder that can actually run, can we not also bring in someone to the back office who has just a modicum of commercial nous, understands the demands of the 21st century and makes the club at least look like it gives a shit.
Rant over…..and in answer to the other question – John Harris by a country mile!
Like hundreds of others I turned up in reasonable time and tried different turnstiles and putting the card in the slot, waving it in the general direction of the green light etc, much to the annoyance of others queuing, but to no avail. The stewards are totally uninterested and treat you as if you’re trying to do something dishonest, so you trudge to the ticket office and see the huge queue of other cheated supporters. At that point you have to decide whether to join this queue which is moving at its usual glacial pace and looks like you might get in mid way through the second half or go home and watch the match in comfort and with a decent chance of getting half time refreshment.
The galling thing is that the club (like us) knew this was going to happen; they could have asked people to bring email proof of purchase, they could have put staff at each corner of the ground with links to the club system (haven’t they done this before?) After the event a competent organisation would have apologised, said they were going to put it right and offered, say, a free ticket to the Carlisle game, but no, like the stewards, they shrug and ignore the utter frustration they have caused.
You’d have thought that lockdown and Premiership money was the chance for the club to get its ‘customer-facing systems’ in order. That side of the club has had nothing to do for the past 15 months except make the buying of tickets a painless experience. What happened at the start of the season? – everything crashed. Of the 20/30 people I’ve spoken to about renewing season tickets, around half said they finally got the web link to work (I still can’t – error key 500?), but half said they had to resort to the phone or the office. But the ticket office is woefully understaffed, so you phone and get the engaged tone, you try again and still get the engaged tone. Eventually you might get through to an automated voice saying you’re 32nd in the queue or whatever, so you wait on hold. After an eternity you’re down to about 18th in the queue when the phone suddenly goes dead. So you phone again and get the engaged tone…..
So you traipse down to the Ticket Office and wait in a long and painfully slow queue. The guy next to me last week said he worked in retail and that if he offered the same level of service to his customers that SUFC do, he’d be sacked on the spot. There were only a dozen or so people before me, but it still took over half an hour before I got out of the rain and into the office. There were several staff milling about but only two serving supporters – I’d love to know what the others actually do. For many people, the whole experience of undertaking any transaction with SUFC is such a depressing and negative one. With any other organisation, or indeed football club, you just pop in or phone up and get yourself sorted. With SUFC you have to take a day off work just to make the most basic of purchases. None of us would put up with this from any other organisation we deal with, we’d take our custom (and money) elsewhere.
Another thread on here talked about how we might grow the fan base and particularly nick new supporters from across the city, but this won’t happen if we make the experience of getting to BDTBL such a difficult one.
And this malaise is not just limited to the ticket office. In fact the catering is worse. Last Saturday my eldest went down to the Kop bar area ten minutes before half time and got served five minutes into the second half. The service is so lethargic and laughably inefficient that there were fights breaking out in the increasingly frustrated queue. I know its a concession, but it would be worth so much more to the club if it maximised its income and the atrocious service does huge reputational damage to the club, particularly at events like the boxing when new punters are in the Lane. The club shop is is similarly inept – if an item is popular (the green kit?) they are just not able to get the right quantities in the right sizes at the right time. (‘It will be in after Christmas!’)
All this is not just rude and unprofessional, it loses the club millions a year in potential income. My fag packet calculation was that a half competent catering operation alone could bring in an extra seven figure sum per year. People not giving up in frustration trying to buy a season or match day ticket, would generate yet more; a Superstore which was actually super, these would all bring in significant and much needed cash. Why oh why is this multi million pound operation so reminiscent of a badly run 1980s local authority. We aspire to be a Premeirship club, but the operational infrastructure is still barely at League One level. Alongside the new left sided centre back and a midfielder that can actually run, can we not also bring in someone to the back office who has just a modicum of commercial nous, understands the demands of the 21st century and makes the club at least look like it gives a shit.
Rant over…..and in answer to the other question – John Harris by a country mile!
