KM refers to Charlton's supporters as customers and not fans and it's beginning to seem possible she'll win the argument. Numerous 'fans' who've gone through good and bad times have given up going and it seems likely that season ticket sales will plummet next season.
We've endured a dreadful 'product' this season in a poisonous atmosphere and maybe she's proved the point that 'customers' will only endure poor service for so long. I never thought I'd ever want to stop going but like many I no longer enjoy it.
I'm not really sure where 'customers' will come from with this regime in charge. Crowds next season will be pitiful.
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Comments
Hate to say it but she is winning that particular argument.
Fair enough many people say they don't want to renew their Season Tickets, they don't want to give their money up front to this regime, and say they're going to pick and choose my matches next season...
But thats no different to going to see Phantom of the Opera one week, leaving it a few weeks and then going to see Mamma Mia etc. or if you choose to go to Football for a Fiver because its cheaper, whats the difference between getting a phone contract through EE rather than O2 because its cheaper?
Only way she'll lose the Customer argument is if Season Ticket prices go down and if Match-Day Tickets go down
If the latter go up, she's won
Shame that KM sees herself as a responsible CEO when she should see herself as a disgraceful parody of same.
Hasn't she said she was taken out of context and therefore effectively conceded she was wrong/misquoted/misunderstood or whatever?
Isn't it us that's kept the customer thing going merely to emphasise the overall levels of general incompetence?
Regular customers would not be people who have shown their loyalty by paying four months in advance when they don't know what the product (league) is going to be or what components (players) are going to be included.
She's created this "argument". Whether fans or customers you don't start an "argument" with them/us. Even if we are "only" contributing a third of their revenue.
If you do then you're failing at your job, and in any other situation you'd no longer have your job.
Whenever she's had the chance to speak to make things better she's created more of an us and them situation. Or an argument, if you like.
So no, whatever happens, she hasn't won anything. The fact she might consider there is something *to* win means that she will ultimately lose.
What I'm saying is that surely it's not the point she was making that she wants us to be 'customers', because as fans - they can take the piss and we still come back for more!
Edit: But agree that the ownership is turning some fans into customers, which has to be bad for the long term as we'll only get a percentage of them back after RD & co. are gone.
There the OP argues by people not attending they are killing the club indicating no matter who is in charge or how poorly they perform its author will accept it because at least the club would still exist.
I am not sure with the associated financial implications the club at that point could exist as a fully professional sports organisation. Even if financially supported by the owner I will argue at such point "the club" would exist in name only.
Now we have the argument because people do not attend the matches they no longer fans or supporters but customers?
I will not insult the poster by asking if they come from the same background as Ms Meire and M.Duchatelet.
"Club" is defined "as an organization of people with a common purpose or interest, who meet regularly and take part in shared activities". I have pointed out in horrible detail elsewhere it is an inclusive process.
You join a club, belong to a club, you support a club. The sense of ownership does not come any more basic.
It is why the very "misrepresentation" defence of the words used by this executive merely reinforces their lack of understanding of the organisation they acquired. Nobody who has participated, belonged to, or been associated with any team sport would ever contemplate trying to classify such activity alongside a cinema or restaurant.
You do not join/belong to/ support a cinema, you do not join/ belong to/ support a restaurant. You frequent a cinema and a restaurant to buy product.
For a CEO of a team sport organisation, after 21 months "in situ", to make any such assertion to any sense of ownership and belonging to a club as being weird, odd or unusual, failing to recognise the differences between the operating environments, is appalling. For Duchatelet to choose to offer support for her "words being misunderstood" after the event is worse!
Much as I dislike the term in relation to football "clubs" if through the pursuit of inappropriate practices the executive materially change or evaporate the "substance" behind the "brand" then you would have to consider why you had joined, belonged to or supported the club at all.
A customer is interested in product. So while the current product is poor, it has been poorer.
A supporter is interested in more than product. It comes back to "people with a common purpose or interest". The common purpose of Charlton Athletic Football Club has long been the goals of sporting achievement and pursuit of sporting excellence.
Materially change the "substance behind the brand" and the common interest no longer exists, ergo for many the club increasingly no longer exists - that the consequence performances are so poor is merely a by-product of those material changes.
This regime since Jan 2014 has materially changed the substance behind the brand. In every action and deed it is exclusive and defensive rather than open and inclusive. It is the antithesis of the definition of a club.
So as a customer you may have the same seat. Eleven players in red and white attire may trot onto the field of play. Such players may use "their best endeavours" in any given game but the underlying principles of attaining sporting achievement and of pursing sporting excellence will no longer be there. In essence the results will be of only passing interest.
In principle I have no problem if people wish to support such an organisation. I spent over 15 years around the bottom of the football pyramid with 4 different clubs each supported by crowds of no more than a hundred or two, who largely did just the same.
However such a limited aspiration for Charlton, in light of its history as a competitive professional football club where WE have faced and overcome notable challenges to earn our seat in the upper echelons of the national game and have "our days in the sun" would I suggest for the vast majority have little or no interest.
Supporters today are killing nothing. Supporters are challenging the flagrant betrayal of the "common interest*" being pursued by this regime.
Many have chosen to use sundry tactics including boycotting games to reinforce such challenge. It is entirely a matter for them individually. I respect their decision. With the environment now surrounding the club to position such people as being customers is at best inappropriate. At worst it is insulting.
We know some have already taken the view the club under this regime has already died. They are gone. If things do not change more and more will either drift away from the game altogether or maybe watch lower levels of the game in a more social environment.
Future generations will head to Palace, West Ham, maybe Arsenal or even Millwall.
There is no bigger condemnation of this regime than the future potential loss of thousands of young supporters their betrayal and incompetence wreak each and every day they remain.
* A common interest shared by 95 % of our competition and their supporters.
However, I took the the theme of this thread to be a tongue-in-cheek of saying that maybe KM has 'won' by making us more like customers who may now prefer to do other things with their time on a Saturday afternoon. Not an attack on our fans, more just highlighting the fact that a lot of proper fans just don't want to come any more because of how badly we're being run... and will start going somewhere else their entertainment, maybe a restaurant or a cinema ;-)
Fans making noise, sponsors pulling out, the old mad owner having to teleport over to talk to their media team, songs sung about her at the games, Chris Solly saying this has been "an extremely difficult season", everyone thinking she's useless....
KM hasn't won anything.
And the longer she stays the more the internet will be clogged up with articles about her incompetence.
Renewing my season ticket next year
Robert
Reply|
To:
katrien.meire@cafc.co.uk;
info@cafc.co.uk;
tickets@cafc.co.uk; Tue 23/02/2016 17:28
Dear Katrien,
I hope you are well. I am just emailing to let you know that I plan to renew my season ticket next year as I have been going regularly since the late 80s and attending every home game is pretty much in my blood, I couldn't imagine doing anything else with my Saturday afternoons.
I appreciate the team are going through a rocky patch at the moment and we don't know if we will survive and be a Championship team next season. However, I wanted to ask if the price for my season ticket could be lowered next season?
I currently sit just below the Directors area in the West stand, and as I am 34 I pay the most expensive price for my seat. In addition because I pay via the credit agreement, I think that adds an additional £50 bringing the total to around £550-£575, something like that.
I have had no problem paying that in the past, I understand some seats are classed as more expensive given the view etc. I didn't actively seek out that seat either, just so happened that when the west stand was re-developed at the end of the 1997-98 season, my seat was located there.
Anyway, I'm asking for the cost to be reduced because I do not feel at £550 odd I get value for money. As an example, the team have only won 3 home games all season. I've basically paid about £165 per win. That's a lot of money for each win.
The standard of football has been poor and the general feeling and atmosphere is poor. I don't expect this to improve any time soon as results have been getting worse and worse.
So if we go down, I think it would be appropriate for me to pay around £350.
Please could you let me know your thoughts?
Best Regards,
Robert
I don't think that there was any deep seated meaning to it, and I actually think RD's most recent comments are as close as anyone has gotten to saying "like me or lump it." The rest, including KM not coming out and either explaining or apologizing is just poor communications (and I mean that in the way of, they desperately need someone in to help tidy up their PR image and improve communication as a whole).
I'm going to use an analogy from my career. I work a lot on web applications for the Department of Defense Family Programs here in the States. As stated on other threads, I'm very left leaning, and opposed both foreign wars of the early 2000s. In my younger years in particular, I was outspoken in my criticism of some of the practices of the Armed Forces. I have no immediate family who have been in the Military, and we are mostly peaceful dissidents. This isn't an attempt to politicize this, this is my way of saying I had no real culture understanding of this world. Now, those people are who I work for. And now, most of the people I work with are either former Military or part of Military families. If we talked politics, we probably wouldn't see eye-to-eye, but I have a tremendous amount of respect not just for what they've been through, but for the fact that they've all treated some loud mouthed marxist kid from LA so well.
Every now and then, someone on one of our teams will make a comment about certain users being ridiculous, and I've done it myself. But inevitably, someone will take them aside and have a quiet word and explain that 1) life can be incredibly difficult for Military families, dare I say in some situations much harder than being a Charlton supporter, and 2) what they're complaining about or speaking about could have been an issue for some time, and that you are the one who is new to the situation, not them. I kind of see the customers comment that way. It's lacking empathy and situational awareness, but it's not necessarily malicious or intended to start a war.
For me, her comment from two Fan Forums ago when she started her powerpoint, I believe it was "Haven't we been through this already?" is far, far, far more patronizing and unprofessional. Again using an analogy from my work, I go through long stretches of presenting, and re-presenting, and sometimes re-re-presenting information to groups that vary in audience. I would never start a talk that way (though given my constant repetition I have been known to ask a group if we've already gone through things--lightheartedly and humbly), and if someone on my team did that they would get a serious ticking off (and I'm not one for talking people down, but it's just inexcusable).
I know comparing my work to those running the club is a crude comparison at best, and I do believe there are few, if any businesses like running a football club. We all say dumb things about our work or those we work with, and that's how I see the customers comment. But, for me, the comment at the fan forum is inexcusable.
And we're bottom of the table.
I am a fan when I watch Charlton and I support the team. I am a fan when (on nights like tonight) I try my best to follow the action from a distance and completely irrationally hope that I can influence events by nothing other than will power. I am a fan when every day I think about how the club is doing and spend any spare moments hoping for an upturn in fortunes. I am a fan in the countless hours that I spend discussing the club on Charlton life. I am a fan when I spend my time researching the club's history or just making silly Charlton related pictures. I am a fan when I wear red and white to show my love for the team. I am a fan when I wear black and white to show both my love for the team and my hatred of the regime. I am a fan when I protest behind the West Stand to rid the club of its poisonous ownership.
I am a customer when I buy over-priced meagre portions from the kiosks on the concourse. I am a customer when I buy pish-poor 'beer' from the same kiosks. I am a customer when I by my customary souvenir programme. I am a customer when I buy tatty toot from the club shop for the sole reason that it bears the Charlton name and/or badge.
Guess what. I no longer buy food, beer, programmes or toot from them. I refuse to be their customer. I still love the club, but I detest the ownership. This club will never lose me as a fan.