Pleased to see this morning’s initiative by Celtic to provide people with a more visible and accessible complaints procedure, including an “Our commitment to you” section. I know it’s almost blasphemous to use the word ‘customer’ in a football context, but when it comes to levels of service, it is useful to benchmark the ‘customer experience’ at Celtic Park, which is patchy and often disappointing.
I’ve been meaning to pick up this topic for a while but there is a Supporters’ Forum coming up next month, where various supporters’ groups will be given a chance to put issues of concern to the club, and I planned to raise it directly with the club before writing about it here.
Celtic have a great brand (if you indulge me with another blasphemous but useful term), born to feed the hungry, champion of the underdog, fundraiser for the poor and needy in Scotland and across the globe. We still have the unique Seville legacy – which is 11 years old today – and on Saturday, 47 years after their own crowning moment, the remaining Lisbon Lions will cast their considerable shadow over European football, but a great deal of the ‘customer contact’ reflects a club weary from more recent skirmishes. It needed be this way.
We are one of the world’s unique brand properties, like Disney, but a lot smaller, of course. Every customer contact, every public-facing decision, should reflect this. Disney understand this. They make you pay ridiculous amounts for their tat, but you pay willingly, because every customer contact reflects the highest service levels achievable. None of this comes on minimum wage, you need to select, train and retain good staff, who remain in place irrespective of available alternatives.
Legendary customer service is expensive, but if you own a uniquely ethical brand, paying that expense can be profitable.
Look around at brand management elsewhere. BP throw an environmentally responsible ‘better use of energy’ message at you straight from their home page, and they are one of the world’s most notorious polluters. Barcelona give their ‘More than a club’ message the prime spot (top left) on their home page, without a notion of irony around their tax or Qatar cash transactions. Apple have “Apple and the environment” prominently on their home page. They have little to do with the environmental movement, but they know how important to their business it is to maintain their unique brand.
Ethically, Celtic are miles ahead of any of these outfits but you need to go hunt for our considerable ethical works on the club website.
What should Celtic do when training, match day stewards, or kiosk staff (don’t start me)? What should we do when faced with an expensive business decision? Consult the brand values. Brand values are absolutely sacrosanct and the cost of maintaining them should be looked on as an opportunity to invest in them. At the moment lots of areas are under-invested in, reflecting completely different values to those who rush into the ground on match day.
Our values are to build a great football club which improves Health, promotes Equality, encourages Learning and tackles Poverty. Celtic do this through the very real help they give to thousands of people through Celtic FC Foundation. This is where we are today but all of this should have a higher profile.
When you visit the Celtic web site two days before season ticket renewal deadline day (today), you should be smacked around the senses with our work on Health, Equality, Learning and Poverty. Do that and the drag-through to renewals or merchandise sales will follow, ask Apple or Disney.
We need confidence in this strategy. I know it’s expensive, things are tight and demands enormous, but these values, this unique brand, is why we will flourish for another century.
If you want to raise a question at the Supporters’ Forum leave a note below.
Order your signed copy of Tommy Gemmell’s All the Best below.
[calameo code=000390171873c910154bd lang=en page=106 hidelinks=1 width=100% height=500]
1,062 Comments- Pages:
- «
- 1
- ...
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- ...
- 28
- »
kitalba
01:27 on
22 May, 2014
Fair enough but at least now you have the opportunity to put them to Celtic whereas before they were trapped in blogland.
Baby steps to trust.
Dont bring Jesus into it, he was a Spurs supporter.
kitalba:
You don’t need to sell me on that mate. I am in Year 6 of a self imposed exile from the football club I love because I will not fund “the strategy” or the bonus of the man who leads it.
I bowed out of it years ago, and I see nothing that would entice me back.
Am I advocating “starve them out”? Lol … not at all. It’s a personal choice I made, and I am under no illusions that it’s had any impact whatsoever.
But the difference between what’s happening at Sevco and the battle we’d face to oust certain people is this … it will only take a drop of 15,000 tickets over one summer and the protests that go with them to change everything at Celtic Park.
Because first, and foremost, Celtic is now a business. Sad but true, and Paul’s editorial today, which highlighted some excellent things, reminds us that we’re a business with certain other interests … so too is Facebook though, and Microsoft.
I don’t know where we go in terms of reform. But if we are, once again, buying into the “Celtic and Rangers” model my exile is going to last a hell of a lot longer, and might wind up being permanent. It pains me … it really does.
I won’t go back until a certain person is gone.
James Forrest is praying for The Unconquerable Oscar Knox
Maybe you saw it but FIFA have a whistleblower website and they were asked to revisit the part Campbell Ogilvie played in the LNS case and hopefully will have another look at Bryson’s law. Its been about six weeks since the request was made.
They were asked
Last March 2013 FIFA investigated a complaint raised by contributors to the Scottish Football Monitor. The complaint can be found in full at
http://scottishfootballmonitor.wordpress.com/2013/03/12/fair-play-at-fifa/comment-page-48/#comments.
After investigation FIFA closed the ticket but said ” The Chairman of the Investigatory Chamber of the FIFA Ethics Committee has decided not to initiate further proceedings at this time. Please note that the Chairman is open to revisiting his decision upon review of any additional material that you believe substantiates your allegations, including your belief that the alleged conduct violated the FIFA Code of Ethics.”
Since then additional material has emerged that suggests that those preparing the commissioning were misled by the administrators of the club under investigation withholding key evidence that would have shown that irregular payments were indeed made in the case of two players (with the nature of many other payments still to be decided by a Upper Tier Tribunal).
The evidence also suggests that the now President of the SFA (and a potential British FIFA Vice President) Campbell Ogilvie was party to the instigation of the tax scheme subsequently deemed irregular, but failed to make any distinction in his testimony to the Independent Enquiry that would have corrected the assumptions on which the judge based his decisions. Full details can be found in the letter sent to the lawyers of the Scottish Professional Football league at
http://www.tsfm.net/an-honest-game-convince-us/#comments
and the evidence sent to SPFL lawyers is attached.
The original complaint was that the decision reached by The Enquiry in terms of sporting advantage and player eligibility on incomplete registration was perverse and still requires FIFA clarification of the intent of the registration process and eligibility consequences of failure to comply. It affects all professional football globally in our opinion and the additional evidence now supplied suggests it was only possible because of the withholding of said evidence.
We believe based on the evidence that the following General Rules of Conduct were broken.
1. Persons bound by this Code are expected to be aware of the importance of their duties and concomitant obligations and responsibilities.
2. Persons bound by this Code are obliged to respect all applicable laws and regulations as well as FIFA’s regulatory framework to the extent applicable to them.
3. N/A
4. Persons bound by this Code may not abuse their position in any way, especially to take advantage of their position for private aims or gains.
Given the possible nomination to the post of British FIFA Vice President which has an international aspect we believe Mr Ogilvie should be granted the opportunity to clarify his position on this matter.
Auldheid:
I did not know that at all mate!
I think that’s excellent. I have always suspected that this can of worms will only be opened from the outside. I have long wanted a way of getting the authorities from UEFA and FIFA involved here. They are needed. It is overdue.
Oh dear,
One life an all that,
long time deid.
Each to their own.
Love ur team, eff the rest.
Auldheid:
I prefer the ‘charge of the light brigade’ (I know) as opposed ‘baby steps’.
But that is just me, maybe I am way wrong and your approach is the better to achieve the ends we both want to see, but mate, we are both going to be eaten by the worms before ‘baby steps’ achieves a meaningful conclusion.
I love history mate, I devour it as best I can, and call me biased, and I am, but although I always read history from as many perspectives as I can, I always see it through ‘catholic’ eyes. History is heaped and I mean HEAPED against us, not just in Scotland either, so we can keep on taking those ‘baby steps’ for this generation, and the next, and the next, and the next, and the next, and the next, and eventually we might just achieve parity. Maybe.
Or we can charge with everything we have and are today. If we did… then I hope the worms have a feast.
James Forrest is praying for The Unconquerable Oscar Knox
Are you the guy who writes those sometimes intelligent articles on your own blog?
The very same McBhoy.
Sometimes intelligent haha. Yeah … a fair comment that one :)
Ah just wondered, thought maybe yer account had been hacked. Or yer evil twin had took over an started talkin pish. No offence ;-)
Its a knack to insult someone an flatter them in the same sentence.
James Forrest:
I loved the innocence when Celtic was just a football team.
Unfortunately I support a team that is shackled by bigots and my shame is my team – appear – to be happy with their comfortable shackles, even after all the sacrifices of those who have left before us, to whom we will never pay back our debt.
I wonder if my children’s children will think well of me when they in turn are shackled in kind.
I don’t blame any one man, I blame all of us collectively, we are all culpable.
McBhoy:
Welcome to the blog, I apologise if you’ve been around for a while, I don’t get the opportunity to read as much as I used to and I’ve only just noticed your name.
But please, is there a point to what you’ve been posting these last few minutes?
Lol so you are referring to my “self imposed exile” from Celtic Park ?
Mate, I do love my club. I love it from a distance. I made a difficult decision, a decision that I still feel even today, but like every break up I ever had where I was the one who instigated it, and in particular the last one, even on the days when I regret it I know I was right.
I could list for you the memories of nights I never saw. I can “see” Joe Ledley scoring against Rangers to go top of the league in my head, from a hundred angles, the same way I can “see” Tony Watt’s goal against Barcelona in the Champions League.
Know where I was when we beat Barcelona? I was right here, in this chair, in an empty fecking house, with no booze and no-one to share the experience with.
Except I did. I always do. I’m no different than the guys who were on night-shift that night or working half a world away, or sitting in the early hours of the morning in Australia or mid afternoon in Manhatten, following it on CQN.
It’s not the same … but it works for me. And it has to, because I’ve made a decision and I won’t change it until Peter Lawwell clears out his desk. The club does not miss me, I miss them. So it doesn’t hurt them. It hurts me.
But it’s a point of principle, and I can live with that. And I do.
Great wee movie line came back to me just then ….
“Where are all the good men dead? In the heart, or in the head?”
I know where my heart is. And I know where my head is too. I know why I do it, and I also know it doesn’t change how I feel. The institution is bigger than one man … and it’s bigger than what goes on out on the pitch, and I would love it even if I never watched another game in my life, if I turned my back on football entirely, as I very nearly did in June 2012, and would have had the right decisions not been made by the clubs.
I love Celtic. I won’t let that blind me. The table is crooked, and I won’t play.
James Forrest:
Who was that last post of yours directed to?
The new guy. The one who thinks there’s a knack to insulting someone and praising them in the same sentence, like he’s gifted or something.
He seems alright though.
See how easy it is?
kitalba
Your being way to hard on yourself.
James Forrest:
Simmer.
I had empathy, lots of empathy, when you wrote about the Barcelona game and you had nobody to share your joy with.
Such moments drain the joy too quickly. I’ve been there, many times and in ‘my life’ there is not much worse besides mourning.
McBhoy:
I love flagellating.
I agree mate.
About Barcelona though … that moment means as much to me as it does to every other Celtic fan, and because I knew that, it was a collective experience whether I was there or not, and whoever I’d have been with.
I knew how every other Celtic fan in the world felt at that moment, all those I knew who were there and those who weren’t. It was no less magical.
Kitalba, long time lurker myself, i have posted the odd comment, nothing too controversial, thought it was time i got a bit more “active” I work odd hour an you guys have kept me entertained for a long time, I’m just returning the favour, dont expect it every night though, I’m a lazy bassa..
Yeah those odd hours are something …. this site got me through a lot of those.
I like to work at this time of night, just me and the coffee and the music.
Speaking of which …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ul-cZyuYq4
JF your getting the hang of it, nice one.
McBhoy:
Well again welcome to the blog, controversy isn’t such a bad thing in my eyes as long as there is a point to it. Controversy fuels the mind.
But don’t go taking that for gospel, it is just my opinion.
Again, welcome on-board.
McBhoy
I’ve been something of a lurker myself these last couple of years.
They are a friendly bunch when you’ve been here oooooh a hundred or so years ;)
JF what about that spirit track that led zep ripped off, theyve got a case surely.?
Cheers Kit, your i nAus right?
Haha … I’ll tell you …. this one ALMOST got the title of today’s article …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyE4CLM0QIA
I’ll save it for another time ….
There aren’t many of us about at the moment but never mind, this song is for us.
Eddi Reader
Kit ive no clicked the link yet, is it “perfect”?
Couldnt wait for an answer so i looked Kit, obviouslty not better tune by far.
In a Broken Dream
McBhoy;
Yeah I’m in Australia, I try to make the best of it.
James Forrest is praying for The Unconquerable Oscar Knox
Ive only got about 20 albums left in the loft, Tango in the night is one of them.
Kit, i dont envy you, ive 2 sisters down there, they love it. I visited but couldnt stay, i like the uk, what can i say, got kids here, and celtic, of course, did i tell you i was lazy btw?
We said we’d walk together, come what may
McBhoy:
It’s for my kids I stay here.
ONE