With 293,000 members and a turnover of around 750 million euros per year, FC Bayern Munich is one of the world's top football clubs, with a correspondingly large worldwide fan base. And these fans expect FC Bayern Munich to perform just as well when it comes to customer services as the club’s players do on the pitch.
To live up to this expectation, the club offers its fans a wide range of service channels for ticketing and merchandising – and Capita has been responsible for the record-holding German champion's customer services since 2017, as part of a holistic concept.
The challenge
Every month, FC Bayern Munich has to process several thousand service requests that come into the club via phone and e-mail. These areas are diverse: headquarters, ticketing, merchandising, KidsClub, annual tickets and the club's own TV channel. In particular, support for the hotline for enquiries from association members needed to be improved.
Customer service management at FC Bayern Munich is rather complex. The fans’ concerns cannot simply be broken down into traditional consumer enquiries; the fans identify intensively with the brand and have a very strong emotional connection to the club. It was therefore all the more important the team from Capita not only covered all content-related topics, but that they understood the FC Bayern Munich brand and the relationship the club has with the fans – and that they kept this in the foreground.
It was also vital to the club that customer service be always available, Monday to Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. As part of a pilot project, a new matchday service was introduced: a ticket line available six hours before kick-off i.e. also at the weekend.
Since 2017
➥ Capita has been responsible for customer service at FC Bayern Munich
90%
➥ measured customer satisfaction
Issue
FC Bayern Munich required the quality of the customer service the club gives its fans to be optimised by being put into a holistic concept, including improving accessibility and reducing costs.
Input
Capita developed and implemented a multi-channel and cross-departmental customer service concept.
Impact
Having been given better accessibility and increased service quality, FC Bayern Munich have reacted with enthusiasm and have given the club a customer satisfaction rating of over 90%. At the same time, the service costs for the club have been successfully reduced.
Capita’s customer-first concept
Capita analysed the existing channels, processes and infrastructure with a view to introducing a holistic customer service concept. Existing hotlines and communication channels were taken over and redesigned on the basis of various optimisation measures that would make more sense economically and bring a better focus onto the customer.
A team of specialised customer advisors were put together who were trained on this wide range of requirements. The team refocused the services to make them personalised to each individual customer issue. So, for instance, a fan who tries to replace a lost ticket 30 minutes before the start of the game must be addressed differently than a mobile customer who simply wants to extend his contract.
As part of the project, the central customer administration database, developed in-house by FC Bayern Munich, was made accessible to both the club and Capita’s employees – creating maximum transparency. This access to the club’s back-office infrastructure has allowed Capita's first-level support staff to look after fans in the best possible way.
A winning result
Since Capita has been responsible for FC Bayern Munich's customer service, incoming enquiries can be processed faster and more directly than ever before – all thanks to optimised processes and structures and a customer-oriented approach that considers the needs of each individual.
The measured customer satisfaction is now over 90%. Thanks to the club taking a fan-oriented approach callers feel that they are in good hands, and due to the reduced waiting times they are also noticeably more relaxed during the conversations. The successful partnership will be further developed.
