I think I may know what half the problems are. LP openly had a lightbulb moment after being on the board for god knows how long realised that they did not have anyone at all on the management side or board that knew anything “professionally” about how a so called professional football club is run and as a consequence appointed a DOF.
He might realise soon that no one on the board or employed has any experience or expertise in hospitality management, customer satisfaction and facilities management and assumes that appointing a bean counter as the SLO to fob off customer complaints is the answer when all I can see him doing is being a mere email forwarder to the Carlsberg complaints dept black hole and then forgotten about
They need someone quickly to fill that gap or else the 5,000 through the turnstiles that he wants will turn to 3,000 rapidly and season ticket holders will stop attending and then not renew next season
I dont know for the life of me know what on earth Gamble and Mole actually do, but they don’t seem very proactive in the sphere of making sure the customer experience is attractive and a fun enjoyable experience is had by the paying customer irrespective of what the result on the pitch is.
It seems to me the supporters don’t matter to them and are an unecessary evil once they have payed their hard earned
My old man is a season ticket holder of 40 odd years he left at half time today couldn’t get a drink or food so he buggered off to the pub it must be bad for him to do that trust me.
Apparently they sit down every morning through the pandemic and go through a cash flow spreadsheet that Gsmble has knocked up yo see where they are money wise.
It doesn’t seem.to.have dawned on any of them yet that if you give the paying customer good service then they are likely to spend more, thus alleviating some if the cash flow issues. Perhaps this is a step too far on customer relations fir the 3 of them.
Perhaps somebody should email Banks’s and ask if they want to be associated with a club that bears it’s name and can’t order enough of it’s product to sell
Today was a huge opportunity. There’s nowhere to drink within about a two mile radius of the ground now.
Our response - a failure to provide either the human resource nor enough stock to cater for the demand generated by a crowd that was less than half capacity.
Commercially criminal.
I saw the queue in the bar and went straight to my seat.
I think I have only ever posted on here a couple of times and I never complain about anything really but todays match experience was awful, if I was a casual fan I wouldn’t be going again after that but I have got a season ticket this year thinking things are changing but they have but for the worse.
My thoughts are,
My turnstile was closed and there were no signs anywhere or anyone to help to advise where to go.
I asked a steward then if I was in the right queue and he said I was but when I got to the front I found out I wasn’t, I think this happened to other people as well.
Inside the ground the queues at the bar and kiosks were ridiculous and no cash was being accepted, the bar I went to the staff were sharing the same card machine.
There was only the one kiosk open in the upper, don’t know why because there was loads of staff in the one which was open getting in each others way.
The sound system upstairs was not working and couldn’t hear any of the announcements.
This might sound a bit petty and stupid but the scoreboard was rubbish I thought it with just the score stuck up in the corner, I am sure it used to give more information out and looked better.
There didn’t seem to be an effort by the club to create any sort of atmosphere or matchday experience, the whole place just felt tired and dirty.
With regards to Leigh Pommlett I have always been a supporter of his but I am beginning to think he his an excellent PR man with his videos etc but there is nothing actually behind his words.
With regards to the game that first half was one of the worst and most embarrassing of any team I have seen not just Walsall. I understand what people saying time to gel etc but I would agree if that if I could see a plan and style of play but I didn’t today.
Anyway rant over off to watch Match of the Day, roll on Tuesday and Scunthorpe
Can’t hear them downstairs, same last Tuesday, when a sub comes on it is just noise, can’t hear the names. The scoreboard is an enormous pile of wank, worse than the one we had in the 90s that only worked one game in three.
I got the hat trick up of complaints this week. Tuesday I was denied access to the Bescot Bar as I’d made the cardinal sin of entering the stadium first notwithstanding the fact that apparently the stewards should have told me if I wanted a drink I’d have to go through the fire doors! Today the stewards asked us to go to the turnstiles to the left to avoid the queue only to find that when we got there they wasn’t open so when we got back to where we started we had to rejoin the queue that was even longer! In the week I had issues with my season ticket as firstly after going down in person to chase them up I was told that my application to have a season ticket card hadn’t gone ahead as it had not been added to the list to mail out - even though I had a saved email on my phone to say they would send me one in the post! I then exchanged a few emails and phone calls with them as they thought they may have sent my card out to someone else with the same name! Then they wanted evidence that my money had gone out of my account on June 21st so I had to provide that. So I finally got sorted with my card when I collected it at the ticket office pre game. You couldn’t make it all up.
Today was a truly awful match day experience. I went to the game with a couple of my mates and my kids. We queued in light rain to get into the ground for 5 minutes - no big deal but this is Walsall not Manchester United. I then queued for exactly 25 minutes to get a drink - 25 whole minutes!!! Even after that there was no draught lager and only bottles available. At half time I once again queued for a drink but gave up after almost 10 minutes of waiting.
Felt so sorry for the kids working behind the bar. They have been badly let down by management.
The saddest thing about this thread, and what should really concern the people who are running our Club, is that we are pretty hardcore. I’m nearly at my half-century of watching Walsall, others will have been going longer, some not so long, but for goodness sake, we are all stupidly, blindly loyal, and if we are angry and fed-up about the matchday experience today, how can we possibly attract and then keep casual supporters? The next generation of supporters? A couple more years and I might be one of the youngest left watching our matches.
For Gods sake, Mr Pomlett, sort things out. If high level employees need to be sacked, then sack them. The Club cannot continue in this manner.
Having got home half hour ago I’m still just absolutely flabbergasted at how poor the whole off pitch experience was today. As others have said, they’ve had 18 months, not to mention the friendlies were supposed to also be testers for them to iron things out.
It wasn’t just one thing or even a couple of things but a whole host of issues, many of which seem to be getting the basics right.
I’ve worked in customer services for 20 years and also Chair a board of directors for a national charity. If the powers that be want someone to scrutinise and provide fair challenge to the executive team from a fan perspective with a background in good governance, I’m available to do just that. It wouldn’t be pretty but I would get results and change.
