Ask any C-suite executive in the business, and they'll tell you the key to a successful sports venue is creating an outstanding entertainment experience. And as in any other sector, success boils down to sales — selling tickets to games and promotional events, club memberships and merchandise. Growing these sales means creating the kind of personalized experience that makes fans flock to events again and again.
The reality is fans are made, not born, and it takes work to build loyalty and nurture relationships. Customer service must excel at every level, engaging fans both at home and in the stadium. So, it's no surprise sports organizations run some of the largest contact centers around.
An advanced contact center built with a robust unified communications solution is at the heart of a winning customer experience. Let's take a closer look at how innovative contact center technology facilitates customer retention and makes fans feel like a part of the team.
Rewriting the customer service playbook
Legacy contact center technology can be expensive, inefficient and disjointed, hindering the efforts of customer service agents as they build trusting relationships with fans. A single unified system, however, creates a whole new playbook by putting advanced technologies into the hands of sales and customer service teams.
Scripting modules: Agents must be able to handle an entire call and guide customers through a complete transaction. Advances in call scripting remove the robotic element so often associated with this type of contact center resource, while intuitive visual scripting interfaces enable managers to create and deploy scripts that can be modified with zero downtime. After all, scripting should be based on the interactive processes that take place between the agent and the fan, not on a predetermined, static dialogue.
Additionally, dynamic manipulation of call scripts, teams and calling lists allows agents to navigate seamlessly between different versions, even while they're speaking to customers. Your scripting tool needs to integrate with Web Services and internal systems to retrieve information – the latest weather forecast, business-specific data and more – so agents can adapt on the fly.
Support for all modes of outbound dialing: There are four primary models of outbound dialing, each with unique benefits. Preview dialing prompts idle agents to view available customer information with the option to place a call using click-to-dial. Progressive dialing automatically makes outbound calls and alerts agents if they've been idle for too long. Power dialing delivers a connected call via an automated screen pop to agents as soon as they become free. Predictive dialing makes outbound calls based on when agents are likely to finish their current transaction. These models keep agents informed, productive and engaged with as many fans as possible during their workday.
Support for multi-channel interactions: Your contact center technology must allow agents to connect with fans through their preferred mode of communication, from voice and text to emails and web chat.
Campaign management tools: A creative campaign strategy will still fail if you're not reaching out to prospective fans at the right time, through the right channel and offering the right promotions. List segmentation tools enable your organization to deliver intelligent multimedia customer contact. Automated data imports, scheduled reporting, managed list quotas and the ability to establish parameters around how you want to process each list are just some of the features available today.
But it has to be easy
Sports venues are not contact centers, even though they rely on them to create and retain customers. This means the unified communications solution must be robust and simple to install and use. Some key features to look for are:
An open platform: A modular approach allows for the easy addition of new features as you grow and your needs change.
User-friendly management: Visual interfaces that provide drag-and-drop tools for quick and easy campaign management and simple deployment of call scripting allows non-technical staff to use the system to its full potential.
Seamless integration with external systems and databases.
Visual data segmentation and list creation.
Easy dynamic assignment of agents to campaigns with no downtime.
A contact center that delivers a personal and human customer experience will not only fill more seats for tomorrow's game, but also keep fans engaged for the entire season and beyond.
