Letter from the Brentford FC boardroom, 19th July 2006
Dear Supporters,
I was pleased to be able attend the Fans’ Forum just prior to my holiday. There was a very good attendance for a night that featured both Leroy Rosenior and the Football Club Board.
Most of the board spoke about their areas of designated “interest” and subsequently took questions from supporters. I spoke about mine which is customer service. I see it as a key part of my role to understand your concerns as supporters. One issue that is constantly raised is ticketing. The problems with ticketing reached a crisis the season before last with the FA Cup game with Southampton. Since then the Club invested in a new ticketing system.
The ticketing system is only as good as the data that is held on it and it became clear that unless the quality of data was improved then the system would not be able to deliver the functions of which it was capable. As a result the entire database of over 10,000 records has been reviewed and updated. The system is now ready to have some of its additional functions used.
One of these functions allows direct ordering of tickets via the Internet. Work was completed on this function during the course of last week and the system is ready for testing this week. We need to test the system to make sure it does what it is supposed to and it interfaces correctly with credit/debit card companies. The Club asked for 20 volunteers to test this and within two hours had over 20 offers of help. So if you volunteered, “Thank you.”
So long as there are no major problems with the results of the testing the plan is to have Internet ordering available for the first home League game. If this is a success, we aim to enable the Internet based season ticket ordering for season 2007/8. The benefits to supporters of these changes should not only be the ease of purchase but should also reduce telephone call queuing times for everyone, because customers wishing to purchase tickets will not have to go through the switchboard. The staff at the Club do work hard and it is expected that use of the Internet ordering will free them to serve other customers better.
You should be aware of a more consultative approach to changes at the Club. For example at the Forum our new caterer Azure, provided various samples of the sort of food they can serve. They received a lot of positive feedback with the curry being particularly popular! As a result of this feedback plans are being put into place to offer different food than has previously been seen at Griffin Park.
It really is important that we collectively can make Griffin Park the place you want to bring your family and friends.
Let’s work together!
Jon Gosling
Comments can either be sent to me on or directly via comments page.
19th July 2006