This post goes alongside the latest Extra:Time Fan Engagement webinar so do check that out.
The FA’s Accredited Club Fan Experience Assessment programme has now reached more than 70 clubs since its inception early last year. Our team of assessors – all aficionados of the non-league game – have ventured to all parts of the country to see how well clubs deliver the ‘first time fan’ experience.
Why? Because, however well you promote your games to new fans, it’s the experience that determines whether or not they’ll come back as it’s known that a new fan who attends three or four consecutive games is much more likely to become a regular – maybe lifelong - attendee. Habit is the bedrock of attendance and while you can’t control the quality of the football, you can much more easily control the match day experience ‘off the pitch’.
To help clubs identify and implement improvements, we base our reports on the principles of Customer Journey; dividing the experience into a set of Touch Points that encompass every part of the experience: from the website to traveling to the ground and everything that happens after that.
Different Touch Points are important to different people: a good stress-free travel experience is vital for those bringing youngsters to their first game, while a well-stocked, friendly and inviting social club or club house will be key to many others. As anyone who follows @footyscran will know, the refreshments experience is fast becoming the way to put your club on the map too.
But after two decades of work, we know that there is one aspect of the match day that has the greatest influence on re-attendance and that’s the quality of engagement from the volunteers representing your club on a match day. It is, after all, one of our community game’s great strengths. If you were asked to quote your game’s unique selling point (USP) you’re just as likely to describe a full and happy club house two hours before kick-off than the actual match itself!
And, as you might expect, this comes across very clearly in the accumulated results from all of the assessments undertaken to date. At an average of 7.0 (out of 10), ‘people’ scores highest of all of the touch points assessed with assessors reporting lots of specific examples of great personal engagement from volunteers.
Car park stewards – often the first club representative encountered by a new fan – are, on the whole, friendly and welcoming. Many have learned to spot new faces and, keen to make people feel welcome, they step forward and offer advice. It’s easy enough to ask someone you do not recognise ‘Hi there. Is this your first game?’. If it isn’t, they’re hardly going to complain, but for those who are unfamiliar with the place, what a great start!
It's well known that first impressions endure and, in our experience, a wonderful early intervention from a lovely club representative will live longer in the memory than something that might not go to plan during the game (running out of pies or not being able to find the programme seller).
On the other hand, when our assessors encounter indifferent car park attendees, this lack of care often casts a shadow over the rest of the experience. As one assessor commented ‘we weren’t quite sure where to go and when we looked at the steward he was on his phone.’
Once at the turnstile, there is an other opportunity to provide a great initial impression. Having volunteers deployed ahead of this point in journey can underline how welcoming the club is since it’s more difficult for someone whose prime role is to facilitate entry to take the time to check that the new fan has everything she or he needs.
At this point in the journey, our assessors have commented on the positive impact of a dedicated match day host: a volunteer whose principal role is to connect with all fans, looking for opportunities to make the new fan feel welcome and part of the club and to make sure they have everything they need for the best first match day experience possible.
Visibility is also important. Volunteers on match day must be easy to spot. On several occasions during this programme of assessments, our visitors haven’t been able to find anyone to offer assistance or simply to tell them more about the club. While there will be cases where clubs are short of personnel on the day, a clear brightly coloured jacket with a club badge and, ideally, ‘here to help’ or ‘match day ambassador’ on the front or back makes a huge difference.
But self-awareness is also important. While we appreciate the commitment volunteers put into the clubs they support, our assessors have recorded several big missed opportunities to engage new fans. One recurring them is when the new fan is in a club house or social club early on with only 2/3 other people (including club reps) present and yet is not acknowledged in any way. It would be clear to those present that this is someone new to the club or, as a minimum, someone who appears not to be familiar with it. And yet, the opportunity wasn’t taken to speak to them.
The opposite of this is when our ‘new fans’ have not only been acknowledged but warmly welcomed, shown around the club and proudly told about the club’s fantastic community work.
The overall picture is positive, but there are opportunities to lift the experience across accredited clubs even further for, more often than not, when someone tells me how good a particular club is, it’s usually because of how friendly and welcoming the club’s match day representatives are.
As one volunteer told me at a game recently, ‘you only have your first match once’. So let’s do all we can to ensure that, regardless of the result, we make it a priority to ensure we’re keeping an eye out for the new fan. After all, without attracting and retaining new fans, we’ll only make club growth more difficult than it might be.
The contribution of club colleagues is often overlooked in our rush to define ‘fan engagement’ purely in digital terms. Off-line engagement is so important to those clubs who do not enjoy the status of the ‘elite’ and who rely on ticket revenue for basic survival. However, from the experiences we’ve recorded over the last 14 years, our assessment is that football still doesn’t fully understand the impact that friendly, helpful and engaging people can make to the way their clubs are perceived by people; to levels of advocacy for their club and to the ‘bottom line’
These ‘magic memories’ are being created at clubs who understand this: whether it’s a car parking attendant noticing a flat tyre and offering to fix it while the fan was at the match; a steward inside the stadium inviting fans to sit in the dug-out during the pre-match warm up; a groundsman inviting a fan to help put the corner flags in or simply making a youngster’s day like they did at Southampton.
But how many clubs are actively working to make these interactions happen? In our experience, clubs who are clear about their purpose tend to do these things well. They talk with their staff about what the club means to its fans; they explore the difference between ‘doing your job’ and ‘making a difference’; they encourage them to take ownership; they work to find out what’s preventing people from trying something different; they remove ‘barriers’; they forgive those mistakes made in the pursuit of making ‘magic’ and they recognise and celebrate those who, through their actions, are clearly embracing this approach.
Physical changes to the match day experience tend to be ‘one off’ interventions: adding a menu to a refreshments outlet, a stadium plan to a common entry point or a new car park, but one truth underpins all of these improvements: it doesn’t matter how good the other things you offer are if the people delivering them aren’t stepping up too.