Job Description Memo

Membership Services Intern for the Oakland Athletics

As a Membership Services intern for the Oakland Athletics, my duties are to assist account executives with everyday operations in both the office and in the stadium. Account Executives manage a large group of season-ticket holder (member) accounts and focus primarily on membership renewal and growth. Membership renewal is all about making sure current members are satisfied with their season-ticket plans; growth focuses on getting new members to sign up or returning members to upgrade their plans. As an intern, I report directly to a supervisor, who is an Account Executive, and the Membership Services Manager who is in charge of scheduling and maintaining client retention. 

Since the Membership Services team is part of the Ticketing department, the three main responsibilities for a Membership Services Intern include:

• Ticket Services
• Ticket Operations
• Ticket Sales

These responsibilities I carry out both in the office and the stadium, however, they slightly vary based on the location. I’ll describe these using examples on what I do during a typical day.

Ticket Services

When I’m in the office most of my day-to-day operations involve ticket services questions from members over the phone and email. Members call into the Membership Services Hotline and wait in the call queue until either an Account Executive or myself pick up the phone. Often members will call in asking questions about how they can access their tickets, how to purchase special event tickets, or how to reset their account password. When performing these tasks, I like to compare myself to a tech support helper. Whatever questions I get, I try to walk the client through the problem or help fix the issue on my end.

When working in the stadium I’ll often get similar questions, however, this time it’s only face-to-face interactions. It’s important that I’m knowledgeable about all of our ticket and stadium policies so that I can give the right information to the members. It’s also necessary to maintain a customer service first mentality. Even though you might have to deal with fans that are unreasonably upset or angry, your goal is always to help resolve the issue. Additionally, some of my time in the stadium spent is setting up seat or suite visits to connect with members or thank them for purchasing suites.

Ticket Operations

Most of the ticket operations are done in the office, as opposed to in the stadium. Ticket operations are done on a system called ProVenue. ProVenue is a ticketing software that tracks and processes ticket sales and allows you to view the seating map and availability throughout the stadium for any game. Learning the ins and outs of ProVenue is extremely important to working in Membership Services. A lot of the time I’ll use ProVenue to look up the accounts of members and help exchange tickets from one game to another, purchase additional seats, or even process suites in the stadium. For example, if someone purchases a suite for a game, it is my responsibility to choose a specific suite location, make sure enough funds are available in the account, and deliver the tickets to the member. Another part of ticket operations have to do with renewing accounts. Every August, season-tickets go on sale for the following season. Updating and changing season-ticket plans is a huge part of making sure revenue stays with the team.

Ticket Sales

Ticket sales are a smaller portion of the job, but still instrumental in the overall operation of the organization. When in the office, I usually receive calls about members or fans wanting to purchase additional tickets for individual games. What becomes difficult is when members want to purchase a large set of tickets together in a specific section. With limited seating in the stadium, I have to do my best to accommodate their needs. Another part of ticket sales are selling entire season-ticket plans. Season-ticket plans are the most lucrative sales for the organization because they’re guaranteed revenue streams. Here I like to think of myself as a car salesman. While most people want to spend as little as possible on a car (or season-ticket plan in this case), I try to “upsell” and pitch all the benefits of purchasing a more expensive plan.

When recording a sale I use a different program called SalesForce. SalesForce keeps track of the different stages of a sale that you’re in. For example, if you had previously set up a call to talk about potentially selling a season-ticket plan or selling a suite, you mark the sale as “In Progress” in SalesForce. Then when I finalize a sale I mark it as “Closed” or “Fulfilled” once I fully process it. Keeping track of sales is key so that I don’t try to sell the same thing to the same person twice. Or even more important is that I don’t forget my talking points from the previous conversation that I had with the client.

Final thoughts

In conclusion, as a Membership Services Intern I learned a lot about what it means to provide superior customer service all the time. I try to make sure that members are always happy regardless of the situation. I also learned a lot about how to pitch and close out a sale. Going into this job I had no experience selling and did not think that I would ever be a good salesman. However, I now could see myself in a position where I have to negotiate and try to sell products to prospective clients. 

Statistics 

Words: 930

Passive Voice Sentences: 3

Flesch Reading Ease: 75

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 11