Social Success: Vitesse Arnhem

Find out how switching to WhatsApp as a communication channel ensured that the international football club Vitesse Arnhem was able to build personal connections with its fans, respond quickly to customer enquiries, and provide extra services, earning a 10% increase in revenue.

On the Ball

Professional football club SBV Vitesse, also known as Vitesse Arnhem is a club with 127 years of history. It is one of the oldest football clubs in the Dutch Premier Division and won the national cup in 2017. 

The Goal:

Fans are integral to the continued popularity of Vitesse therefore the club wanted to provide an improved customer experience. It wanted a quick way to respond to large numbers of enquiries while also offering a more personalised communication channel.

Game-Changing Experience: 

Using phone and email to communicate with customers was too time-consuming for Vitesse. Because WhatsApp is widely used in the Netherlands, the club decided to use the messaging platform for customer communication.
Vitesse worked with WhatsApp Business solution provider Falcon.io, as it could provide the football club with customised desktop and mobile app versions of WhatsApp. This would allow Vitesse to have personalised conversations with its customers, and also manage its community of dedicated fans.
WhatsApp was officially launched as a communication channel for Vitesse Arnhem in April 2019. It could be accessed directly by customers through the desktop and the app, and resolve their queries about a variety of things such as results, tickets and information.
Four new customer service agents were used to communicate with fans via WhatsApp as well as a community manager to resolve other various customer service queries. In the future, Vitesse plans to integrate WhatsApp on its website and mobile app and not use phone or email at all.

Score!

By using WhatsApp, Vitesse was able to directly connect with people and provide them with improved customer experience. Effectively using WhatsApp to solve customer queries, the football club was able to increase revenue by 10% as well as an 80% decrease in average response time.
 
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