Credit Where It's Due

[just_hurting]

Just thought I would pass on a nice story I heard about the club recently.

I have a Carlton supporting co worker who thankfully could not convert his daughter and she rightly follows the Tigers. He took her out to our Family Day this year but was immensely frustrated by what he described as the lack of organization by Richmond who seemed unprepared for such large crowds. In his words they struggled to control lines, failed to make announcements and made approaching many players difficult for him and his daughter. His daughter is also Autistic and struggles in large crowds which added to his frustration as she was extremely disappointed not to be able to see many of her favourite players.

In his frustration he emailed the club letting them know that he thought their organization was terrible and he would not be attending another Family Day. To his delight, (and mine), the club responded with a very honest reply in which they admitted they were shocked by the large crowds and not prepared to deal with the demand. They vowed to be more prepared next year and asked for his mailing address to which they sent out autographed photos of Richo, Lids, Tucky and Cotchin. Her favourite players.

I love hearing these stories about our club and it made me even prouder to be a Richmond supported. Good on them for brightening the life of a little girl who is already battling against a lot of problems on top of her Autism.

 

[Disco08]

Good stuff. It's little stuff like this that can set an organisation apart. Richmond have seemingly sucked at it for years (I have no first hand experience myself) so stories like this hopefully show a change for the better.

 

[TannerstTiger]

Seems the Club used lack a little in the personal dept.Two years ago i was in Melbourne having a life saving operation.Before i arrived i emailed the club asking when my kids came to vist me. Would it be possible to attend a training session and met a couple of players. No reply at all.When i recovered i rang the club and stated my disspointment to them.In short they said they carnt help everyone.That was it....Pleased to hear there might be some improvement these days

 

[Rosy]

Nice story just hurting, thanks for sharing it. I love hearing about kids, especially those struggling with adversity, from any club being given a reason to smile. I'm glad RFC brightened the little girls life. :hearton

Tanners that's disappointing. The trouble is I think it's the luck of the draw who reads your e-mail. My experience is that some people at the club are very obliging and some don't even bother to reply.

 

[Angie]

Hhmmmm, the admin, marketing and PR department of the RFC is not in my good books at the moment... I'm furious... but I'll take it up further with the club directly - not make it public here. I'm crossing my fingers, for their sake, that they handle this one well....

 

[Dyer Disciple]

Fantastic post just_hurting, thanks for sharing. Great to hear it turned from bad to good for the girl.

I've seen way too many dissapointing stories about the club on this site (from a organisational response point of view, not the usual sack the coach stuff :hihi) and we've all heard the membership/sponsorship stories from years past in other walks of life. It's very dissapointing to see these stories so it's always good to hear some good ones.

Class act by the club. :clap

 

[Scoop]

Good stuff. It's little stuff like this that can set an organisation apart. Richmond have seemingly sucked at it for years (I have no first hand experience myself) so stories like this hopefully show a change for the better.

Great response. Put your hand up, admit you got wrong and try to rebuild the relationship.

Again the KISS theory put in to play. It will work most of the time.

 

[17]

getting really sick of hearing how the club was shocked by the demand etc etc.
a pissant excuse for not doing their job properly.
like they didnt realise a few supporters might rock up given 3000 attended Ben's first training run one midweek December morning at 9am?!
i made the same point to the club after the Centennial function last year at Punt Road pre the Carlton game was well attended and massively under staffed (1 hour to get kids face painted, etc).
actually i reckon i have made the same point several times over the years after similar functions / family days.
not trying to be mr smarty pants here but do you reckon the RFC could actually over cater for their supporters just once?! you know, for uniqueness sake?
and if Stephen Wright is supposedly so good at his job, maybe as CEO just once he might take responsibility for getting the supporters functions right.
it's not that hard.

 

[Phar Ace]

Turning disappointment into contentment again is a difficult task.

I can only only imagine how many requests football clubs get, and then trying to determine which are worthy or even valid? So many ways to get it wrong and few ways to get it right :don't know.

Thanks for the story Hurting...... sorry about yours Tanners. Good luck Angie - you catch more flys using honey than a stick

 

[Tigers of Old]

getting really sick of hearing how the club was shocked by the demand etc etc.
a p!ssant excuse for not doing their job properly.
like they didnt realise a few supporters might rock up given 3000 attended Ben's first training run one midweek December morning at 9am?!

Fair point. Most important thing is we learn from it.
Let's just hope that we go well enough this year to draw a similar crowd at next year's family day sans the Cousin's novelty.

 

[Dyer Disciple]

Let's just hope that we go well enough this year to draw a similar crowd at next year's family day sans the Cousin's novelty.

Indeed!

 

[lukeanddad]

I work at a membership organisation which has well over 1m members. My department gets around 30 - 50 enquiries/week from members. Some are hardship-related, some compliments, but mostly complaints. We make it a point to respond to all the member correspondence.

I have written around a dozen letters to the RFC in the past two years - around 6 to the coach and a similar number to the CEO. The coach, to his credit, has personally responded to all my letters. On the other hand, the CEO...

I don't think RFC would get much more than 30-50 letters/week. At 20 minutes per response, we don't get much past 15 hours work a week in additional work. And as we can see from the above, a response - any response - can be great PR

 

[AstuteTiger]

Just thought I would pass on a nice story I heard about the club recently.

I have a Carlton supporting co worker who thankfully could not convert his daughter and she rightly follows the Tigers. He took her out to our Family Day this year but was immensely frustrated by what he described as the lack of organization by Richmond who seemed unprepared for such large crowds. In his words they struggled to control lines, failed to make announcements and made approaching many players difficult for him and his daughter. His daughter is also Autistic and struggles in large crowds which added to his frustration as she was extremely disappointed not to be able to see many of her favourite players.

In his frustration he emailed the club letting them know that he thought their organization was terrible and he would not be attending another Family Day. To his delight, (and mine), the club responded with a very honest reply in which they admitted they were shocked by the large crowds and not prepared to deal with the demand. They vowed to be more prepared next year and asked for his mailing address to which they sent out autographed photos of Richo, Lids, Tucky and Cotchin. Her favourite players.

I love hearing these stories about our club and it made me even prouder to be a Richmond supported. Good on them for brightening the life of a little girl who is already battling against a lot of problems on top of her Autism.

Thats great that the club did that after receiving a complaint, would've put a grand smile on the young girls face...

Now is this club for real.....they admitted they were shocked by the large crowds and not prepared to deal with the demand.
Where have they been hiding under a bloody rock, the ben cousins show has been on full alert for months with sold out shows :hihi and was coming to Jells park and that meant many more thousands would attend because of him...So for the club to say we were not prepared for this just goes to show incompetence is still very high in big organisations...
I said even before family day that they could get 10,000 people cause of Cuz and they got 9,000....
Who ever orgainsed this should get demoted or see ya later as its unprofessional....

 

[Phar Ace]

I work at a membership organisation which has well over 1m members. My department gets around 30 - 50 enquiries/week from members. Some are hardship-related, some compliments, but mostly complaints. We make it a point to respond to all the member correspondence.

I have written around a dozen letters to the RFC in the past two years - around 6 to the coach and a similar number to the CEO. The coach, to his credit, has personally responded to all my letters. On the other hand, the CEO...

I don't think RFC would get much more than 30-50 letters/week. At 20 minutes per response, we don't get much past 15 hours work a week in additional work. And as we can see from the above, a response - any response - can be great PR

Thanks for that Lukeand dad.

The only difference I would make a distinction over is that a response (in my professional experience) may indeed take more than 20 mins and invlove more than one person (should always involve at least another, if only to proof read). This is especially so for where the apparent disappointment is greatest. Then even more so when some form of repairation is undertaken, particularly if it involves player management in some way.

It was a critical issue, but i can recall one complaint consuming much of my week once (organisation of 10000 members, 100 employees/franchisees).

Any GOOD response can be great PR. A bad response (rushed or ill-considered) can be time consuming, even requiring legal input.

As I said, it's not always that easy. But you sound like you are doing it well.

 

[pahoffm]

Yes, I've heard some stories too, both good & bad.

One name in particular gets repeated for doing an excellent job - Rachel

Well done Rachel.
I've only met you a couple of times but heard positively about you many many more.

One time, late last year, a couple of keen Tiger supporters, husband & wife, rang to join one of the Coterie groups - Tiger Executive, I think. (Big bucks for our Club.)

Anyway, they waited a month and heard nothing.
The wife rang the Club to express her disappointment.

With that, Rachel took it upon herself to directly contact the couple and get them signed up to the Coterie group, though it wasn't her direct responsibility.

Again, well done Rachel.

 

[Dyer Disciple]

Yes, I've heard some stories too, both good & bad.

One name in particular gets repeated for doing an excellent job - Rachel

Well done Rachel.
I've only met you a couple of times but heard positively about you many many more.

One time, late last year, a couple of keen Tiger supporters, husband & wife, rang to join one of the Coterie groups - Tiger Executive, I think. (Big bucks for our Club.)

Anyway, they waited a month and heard nothing.
The wife rang the Club to express her disappointment.

With that, Rachel took it upon herself to directly contact the couple and get them signed up to the Coterie group, though it wasn't her direct responsibility.

Again, well done Rachel.

Indeed, I've had some excellent dealings with her. A great asset I hope we can keep!

 

[grumpytiger]

I've worked in complaints and customer feedback for one of our larger govt organisations and while clients were quick to complain (generally with good reason!) it was rare for someone to take the time to call to compliment our staff. Whenever they did, we made an effort to track down the staff member and pass on the feedback, which was not always an easy task when you often only had a first name to go by and some 20000+ staff.

But there's nothing like being recognised and acknowledged for doing a good job.

Is there a PRender with contacts within the club who could arrange for these positive comments about Rachel to be passed on to her?

 

[Phar Ace]

Is there a PRender with contacts within the club who could arrange for these positive comments about Rachel to be passed on to her?

Yeah, just PM Dyer Disciple - he passes a lot of things to her.......

 

[Mr T.]

If anyone knows Rachel, pass on my thanks too... she helped my family upgrade to a Locker Room membership, and arranged a refund of our original basic membership. A very pleasant person to deal with.

 

[Dyer Disciple]

Yeah, just PM Dyer Disciple - he passes a lot of things to her.......

If only you used your powers for good and not evil....I hope your wife is coming to the GvH game, she needs to be filled in on your "cyber" activities :hihi