WHUST ticketing manifesto
West Ham United should offer the following:
A membership package
Football offers season tickets. Other sports offer memberships. The memberships come with:
· Priority access to tickets
· Members areas with higher quality food and drink at discounted prices
· Guest tickets to bring non-members into members’ areas for certain fixtures
· Member events – lunches, dinners, meet the players/coach/CEO events (ticketed to manage numbers)
· Member-exclusive clothing and accessories
· Members forums/interest groups
West Ham should offer a full membership service with members receiving the best benefits. It cannot continue that a football fan from abroad, in London and wanting to attend any game but who ends up at the London Stadium for a single match (or just the first half) pays the same for a pie and pint as a genuine West Ham fan who attends home and away matches. Members deserve better.
The NFC (near-field communication) ticket could be linked to getting a discounted price at bars. Or we have a membership card with credit added. The club could add funds to each member’s NFC /card. Members could also top up their account from their own bank account and use that to get the discounted prices. Could the current “club cash” be used?
It might be worth considering adding packages to membership such as ‘pie and a pint’ member or a ‘real ale’ member and only they are allowed to certain kiosks and must use their membership card/NFC to secure their discount.
But members must get cheaper deals than non-members and tourists. And this must be in fiat currency (GBP£) and not a cryptocurrency.
There should also be members’ merchandise, or merchandise that showed you’d been a member for X number of years or had attended every match in a tournament or in a season. Those who signed up the first year after the move could get a ‘founding member’ pin badge. If the club offered merchandise only available to those who the club could confirm had attended or had held a season ticket for X number of years, these would sell. The club would get goodwill from the members – and goodwill open members’ pockets.
Technology should be used to its full advantage. Spending power, or access to priority vendors/queues/areas, could be added to an individual’s NFC ticket. The NFC software from Fortress can do all of this. Delaware say that their POS systems can easily integrate to handle it. The club must use the technology available to provide members with better deals or faster queues.
Welcome pack
It is rude that the club does not send new season ticket purchasers any form of welcome pack or even a welcome email. This is a must. A welcome pack should include a mix of goodies and practical information, explaining:
· how the NFC ticket works
· how to transfer an individual match to another person if you cannot attend
· how the exchange works
· how the points system works
· how to purchase tickets not covered by the season ticket
· how to subscribe to the fixtures calendar
· the club’s app
· the membership benefits and discounts that apply
· membership exclusive merchandise
· a yearbook with facts and stats including a page on each of the previous season's results, player profiles etc
· a pen, keyring, maybe a card holder or wallet, all in a presentation box
Certainty of communication
If the club sends out an email saying tickets will be issued seven days before the match, then the club must ensure that happens. Similarly, instructions or replies to queries sent to fans must be checked before being sent and be correct. Few fans trust club communication currently because too much of it turns out to be inaccurate. That must change.
The club must also have a clearly stated policy detailing what will happen when things go wrong – to include escalation and resolution. How does the club tell either everyone, or specific groups or identified individuals, that their ticket has gone wrong and how that will be resolved?
And what happens on the day if the NFC ticketing system goes down or there are power cuts. The club should share details of the contingency plans with WHUST and publish the basic details to reassure fans.
Accessibility of communication
The club must communicate with fans in as many different ways and in different formats as required by supporters. People learn in different ways and each one of us prefers different communication methods, including video, graphics, words and audio. And not everyone is using the same technology or on the same social media channels. The club must communicate through as many channels and technologies as required.
The club must meet the needs of those who are visually impaired, have learning difficulties or other specific requirements. But it should also make communications available in languages other than English, particularly those widely spoken within the local community.
Privacy of communication
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has investigated West Ham several times in recent seasons for data breaches. We need to be sure that fans’ personal information is safe and West Ham’s procedures are under better control.
Timing of communication
No major changes to ticketing, whether that’s new technology, changed rules or different procedures, should be announced without prior consultation with WHUST and a thorough testing in advance. The club must have an adequately resourced and robust ‘what if’ back-up plan ready for when things go wrong. Ticket office staff must be available for at least five hours after ticketing information is sent out and all the next day. This means that if ticketing information is sent out on Friday at 5pm, the ticket office contact centre team needs to be available Friday night until 10pm and all day Saturday.
Omnichannel communication
The club should move towards a truly omnichannel ticketing communication so fans can ask questions via social media or SMS and follow up by email or phone call without having to start from the beginning each time. That means the club needs a system in place to identify fans when they use each communication channel and pick up their query where they left off.
Simpler away ticket allocations
The points system for tickets not covered by season tickets is not clear to many fans. Some away ticketing issues such as the points allocation for an individual match, is not shown within the ticketing purchasing website (eticketing.co.uk). The club regularly makes match tickets available to allcomers too late for them to be taken up.
The club’s system incorrectly archived propriety points from last season. This is not the first time this happened.
Tickets are allocated to so many different groups (away season ticket holders, bondholders, Club London, ballot, players/club and general season ticket holders) under different priorities and the numbers available in each category are rarely clear.
We need a more transparent system. The target should be for the club’s entire ticketing allocation to be used up, with fans given the chance to purchase tickets in time to arrange travel/accommodation for the matches.
The replacement allocation system must also remove the incentive to book tickets with no intention of attending just to get more points and priority for the big games.
Members need to have a clearer understanding of how to build points to get tickets and what chance they have of getting tickets for each match. There should be a clear, dynamic, visual graphic of the points required, the dates/times that changes were made and predicted dates/times when the number of points required might be lowered. It should be possible to buy tickets from that page – it should be within or linked to the ticketing purchasing website. The club should send notifications when aways tickets are on sale.
Smart ticket exchange
Season ticket holders wishing to buy additional seats should be able to select a seat and message that ticket-holder direct to see if they would transfer their seat for a specific game. The current system shows only unallocated seats or those on the club’s exchange, yet other seats are often empty come match day. We need incentives to encourage ticket holders to pass on their tickets if they are not going to be able to attend. Too many seats at ‘sold-out’ games remain empty when other supporters would have come had they the chance.
Fair refunds policy
West Ham should produce and publish a fair refunds policy. We have had games changed for so many reasons recently – Covid, death of the Queen, broadcasting, police, European competitions – and there have been major engineering works and strikes that have prevented traveling fans from getting to matches. There could be a whole host of other reasons from terrorism to adverse weather, such as flooding. When a fan buys a ticket for a match but, subsequently, external factors, through no fault of their own, make attendance impossible, the club should refund the ticket. The club has the ability to sell that ticket on to someone who can attend or to supply that ticket to the local community to increase local participation in the club.
Targets and standards
The club should publish targets for response times and resolutions to ticketing issues. It should monitor these and privately share the detailed data with WHUST and discuss the causes and possible solutions when pinch points or bottlenecks arise. Performance against the main agreed standards should be published to the entire fanbase quarterly with an explanation if performance were poor.
WHUST’s proposals for targets are:
1. The most urgent enquiries need to be resolved within a two-hour target, with a four-hour maximum. That means a minimum of 85% of urgent enquiries should be resolved within two hours and the remaining 15% within four hours.
2. A minimum 85% of standard enquiries needs to be resolved within a 24-hour target and the remaining 15% within 48 hours max.
3. All general enquiries should be resolved within five working days.
4. Where there is a complaint, the duty ticketing manager (person on duty must be identified at all times) should deal with it first and, if escalated, the ticketing director/deputy should deal with it. The entire complaints procedure should take 24 hours.
Urgent enquiries are those involving a home game within the next five days or an away game within the next two weeks. During the season ticket renewal window, all season ticket queries are urgent.
Standard enquiries are non-urgent queries concerning general NFC/phone/technology issues, season ticket and claret membership enquires, ticketing transfer/exchange queries.
General enquiries are public enquiries to the club for information on ticketing.