Firstly I think the delay here has been getting the final game deal organized, If that is squared away and we know what we are doing for the year then we can start to sell yearly memberships.
That doesn't however absolve the memberships department from the blame for the last few years. Having discussed STH's and memberships on many occasions with many people I do have a bit of an insight on that team.
Many of us were critical of the team pre 2008, some thinking that the head of the team was only there to try to "score" a player. Either way that person trained up an offsider and although memberships were low for the 2009 season they ran quite will with the sometimes exception of the email list.
That team put together the new memberships package under the board, this switched STH's to members and featured heavily with our history. The 2010 memberships packages were available to buy at the 2009 Grand Final, indeed members were invited to renew the week of the grand final.
During the 2009-2010 summer the club knew that it would be losing the offsider as they were moving to a similar role at ANZ stadium. So the head of memberships was asked to train a new person, a 21 year old lady named Jack. Once Jack was trained, the head of memberships was retrenched, 3 weeks out from the 2010 season.
AFAIK Jack was responsible for the 2011 and 2012 season memberships with some help from previous members of the department during the heavy renewal season and the remainder of the off season to process the membership requests.
However in the 2011 off season, Jack was part of a claim of work place bullying and only came forward once she had secured work elsewhere I am told.
So I think this year?s memberships team is all new again. I could be wrong but it would be nice to have some consistency in the membership team.
Absolutely it would be nice to have some consistency in the membership team. It would also be nice for them to have consistency in having enough of them employed without being stretched beyond their limits. Complaints about the phone not being answered etc earlier in the season boiled down to cost cutting in an area the club should never skimp on, but for some reason they did.
When Jacqueline left without having mentored any of the others, she deleted a heap of stuff and left no outline of roles and responsibilities. It put those who were left in a very difficult situation. Under the circumstances I think they have done an excellent job in getting on with things and much of what I have seen that hampers their efforts has been beyond their control.
What I witnessed a lot of the time, mostly due to increased responsibilities and lack of resources (eg enough staff to do the job) was a system that was counterproductive and highly inefficient.
Here is just an example:
Since there were not enough people to answer the phone, messages would be left. The people who couldn't answer the phone in the first place would then listen to the messages and then set about returning calls. While they were listening to messages and returning calls, the phone would ring and of course - they couldn't answer it. It was a very inefficient vicious circle but the catalyst was the fact that there were not enough staff to simply answer the phone in the first place, let alone carry out all of the other roles and responsibilities they have. Things like changing the last game at the last minute and not having our home games for 2013 locked in when they should be getting membership packs out only exasperates the situation. No doubt they are fielding calls on a daily basis right now from fans wondering WTF is going on.
Well I will tell you what I think is going on. Those in the memberships are not only doing their job and working hard, but are often working above and beyond what should be expected of them. They are often placed under an enormous amount of duress for little reward, yet somehow they still manage to greet customers with a smile and speak to our fans in a courteous and respectful way. They do this even though they often bear the brunt of the inadequacies of their superiors who don't give them enough resources, shift the goalposts, or can't do their own job in a timely manner. If memberships is broken it's certainly not the responsibility of the poor souls on minimum wages, working their guts out and doing the best they can. It's the responsibility of those in charge and all we can hope for right now is that Edwards proves to be as good as many make him out to be. If he isn't then no doubt we will witness the same level of dysfunction that we have grown accustomed to and our club and fans deserve better than that.
