Bernard Halford Q & A

Representatives of the Supporters Club met with Manchester City General Secretary, Bernard Halford, on Tuesday 15th August and put a number of questions to him with regard to, amongst other things, the relationship between the OSC and the football club, ticketing issues and cheese and onion pies!

Mr Halfords' written reply is reproduced below: -

Dear Carol,

It was nice to meet everyone at the Supporters Club Executive meeting last week and I can assure you that I will do everything I can to assist in furthering the association between the Supporters Club and the Football Club as we value our relationship most highly.

The points which you made notes of and forwarded to me have been discussed internally by the Departmental Heads involved and I now give below the following observations which have been sent to me:

Ticketing Issues

Customer numbers

We have had a lot of debate internally about the term 'customer number' and have considered changing the term to 'supporter number'. The initial change from patron to customer occurred 5 years ago when we changed software providers in the Box Office. One provider used patron, the other customer. Opinion amongst supporters is divided and this is reflected in the letters received by the club. We will continue the debate and will advise the OSC of any change.

Thomas Cook Trophy (1)

The agreement between the OSC and the Box Office is that we will reserve an area for the exclusive use of the OSC for every home game. These will be available to OSC members who are also Citycard members. However, for this game we did relax the rules, because as you state the attendance was not high. I will be contacting the branch in question to discuss what occurred and ensure that the issue is resolved in the Box Office.

Thomas Cook Trophy (2)

For all matches we provide 24 customer service stewards around the stadium to deal with card related issues. They each have a PDA that has all of that days match details so that issues can be resolved. Our understanding of the issues at J and K was that a queue did develop, as a result of a particular issue with a couple of supporters. Additional staff were allocated to this area and the problem dissipated. We do try and react to this kind of congestion as soon as we are aware of it.

Postcards

Whilst the club does accept that some supporters took exception to the wording of the reminder postcards we did feel that the marketing needed to be robust to encourage supporters to renew. The word "substituted" was used in the wider context of the message and it did generate an increase in the number of renewals.We have explored the option of paying for seasoncards by instalments. The cost to the club of offering these can be prohibitive if the majority of supporters take up the offer. For this reason we again offered a loan option to Seasoncard holders. We changed loan providers this season to ensure a lower APR for supporters. We will review this option again for next season.

Operational Issue

Open Day

We are having an opening training session, similar to that you described in your letter, at the City of Manchester Stadium for our LIVE4CITY Junior fans (and parents) on October 27th, the school holiday week. We will also have a junior fans "meet the players" day on Saturday 9th September. We will certainly take your comments on board and discuss how this can be expanded to a date more suitable for Official Supporters Club members next season.

Relationship Issue

OSC Recognition

The business arrangements we have with our commercial partners do give them access to our Match Day programme and City Magazine in return for the financial incentive they offer us though we do offer a single page to the OSC. However, we also understand from the conversation on the day of the meeting that you had sent over material which was never subsequently printed or replied to on behalf of the Club. We recognise this is not correct, in future to avoid this confusion please can you send over any requests to our marketing department ian.howard@mcfc.co.uk who will help to support in the appropriate way.

Catering Issue

1.Cheese & Onion Pies - In order to improve speed of service and product quality our catering department has analysed sales data over the past three seasons and taken on board comments from fans. One of the outcomes was to delete cheese & onion pies due to the very low sales/demand ie less than 100 pies per game.
The Pizza Pod, which has received good reviews at other stadiums and leisure venues is due to be introduced. Sampling of the new Pizza Pod is scheduled at the Portsmouth game.

I note comments from the OSC that they think it is horrible.

I await feedback from the Portsmouth game, before deciding if we should re-instate cheese & onion pies.

Portsmouth Game - Pizza Pods received good reviews at Portsmouth. No complaints were received about not having cheese & onion pies.

However I have asked for 1/2 dozen pies to be available on all food kiosks in case.

As discussed we will be holding several focus groups early on in the season, so if anyone from OSC is interested in joining, please forward me contact details.

2. Meat & Potato Pies - I have communicated feedback to the catering department to ensure that we have adequate stock levels going forward.

You may feel that we need to have more regular meetings along the lines which we had last week and also I am discussing the possibility of visits to branches by representatives of the Club and this item with need to be discussed further with yourselves because if it comes to fruition it will need to be organised to ensure we have adequate numbers of membership attending any organised gatherings.

I have discussed the Player of the Year Event and I know that you have meetings arranged to discuss this important function and I suggest that at that meeting you bring forward your feelings in the hope that it will regain its popularity amongst the members and return to be a major event in the Club calendar.

I trust all the above will be conveyed to members at your next meeting and I now await the observations which you will no doubt discuss at your meeting.

Many thanks for your kind words in the e-mail and looking forward to seing you in the near future.

Yours sincerely,


Bernard Halford
General Secretary