VfL Wolfsburg is now a service champion, too

The Contact Center solution optimizes support for VfL Wolfsburg fans! Modernized communications infrastructure increases service quality.

The customer

An average of 800 people contact the ticket and service hotlines of VfL Wolfsburg each day. During business hours, for example, eleven employees at the Contact Center fulfill ticket orders, forward autograph requests to the correct contact person or procure advertising customers. The majority of call volumes, however, is taken up by calls from fans. The official fan club has more than 10,000 members, and there are also various private associations.

The task

“We wanted to continue using the existing hardware but also set up a modern infrastructure”, explains Stephan Bandholz from VfL Wolfsburg. “Communication on the basis of Voice over IP promises an extensive scope of services yet easy administrability – which is what convinced us.” In the old system, for example, setting up extensions required – chargeable – support from a service provider. In the long term, the club also wants to integrate the customer relationship management into the new communications solution.

The solution

With the T-Systems ICT solution, the club now has access to a communications platform which it can largely manage itself and which will also meet the requirements for future championship titles. The platform is based on the IP Office communications solution by Avaya, which unites telephony, messaging, customer relationship management and Unified Communication & Collaboration and can be scaled to cope with up to 384 users. The club uses the solution mainly for information and ticket hotlines but also for communicating with fans, for sales and for internal calls. Avaya IP Office supports employees with extensive functions for convenient working, e.g. integrated Unified Communication & Collaboration, conference calls and call forwarding. In addition, IP Office is simple to administrate and can be easily expanded.

The customer benefit

The new communications solution provided by T-Systems ensures that all callers get through quickly and are connected to the right contact person. “After 5 pm, callers can leave a message on the mailbox and we will deal with their request the next day,” says Mr. Bandholz. In this context, VfL Wolfsburg wants to expand Unified Communication & Collaboration (UCC) very soon. On the one hand, this makes work easier: Numbers can then be dialled from within Microsoft Office, since a single address book will be used for phone calls and e-mails, and call lists are displayed on the monitor. On the other hand, employees with UCC have a helpful tool at their disposal: Voice and fax messages arrive in the same inbox as e-mails, thus increasing availability and improving communications. In this way, the soccer club also meets the requirements of the FIFA world soccer association. Since there will also be games in Wolfsburg during the women’s soccer world cup in 2011, there are special requirements for ticketing. With the T-Systems solution, VfL Wolfsburg has laid the best foundations for this.

Advantages at a glance