Overall membership numbers are at a five-year high. Allowing fans to spread their costs more reasonably has helped that. Signing up on a cheaper monthly price point sounds better, and it’s allowed us to open up more messaging because people can sign up at any time.

The online portal is open 24/7 so we don’t have to wait to reopen our doors for people to sign up to memberships. When we shut at 5, we can send out text messages and emails encouraging people to sign up at their convenience.

The real benefit we will see is at renewal time. The Direct Debits will renew automatically each year, and we will inform our seasonal ticket holders of this, but payment amount won’t change so they will be more inclined to continue. Originally, we had to start from scratch each year and it took a while to chase individuals – now it automatically renews we won’t have to do that.

Over the past three years, the local BSS and ST organisations have collectively gone from coaching just 100 children to over 500. DFC has 100% been a factor in this – when a parent signs up to Direct Debit, they’re signing up for the long run. We simply wouldn’t have been able to become so big if we were still chasing payments. People can sign up to the scheme really easily. We’ve even added a sign-up link on our Facebook.

DFC completely takes the hassle out of chasing payments. Some people will try to get out of paying, but DFC handles this for us and we can focus on bringing in new customers instead. With Direct Debit, once a child is signed up then that’s that – no further input is required.

The integration program has gone very smoothly. DFC has been very accommodating. There has been a bit of back and forth needed between ourselves and our CRM and DFC have facilitated this in a professional and efficient manner.