A while back I claimed that although the world of sports had been a late adopter of CRM there was a great opportunity for sports in taking the lead in social media.

Assuming that clubs and leagues integrate their social media activities with their overall CRM strategies it could not be long before sports clubs – instead of being late adopters of CRM – stand out as thought leaders.

In the past years several sports clubs and leagues have taken steps in the area of social media. These initiatives range from clubs setting up online forums or using existing network tools to connect with fans to the other extreme of for example Ebbsfleet United, where fans own the club!

Although the adoption of social media in sports is still in its early stages (as it is in most industries) a range of industry specific factors – or accelerators - within the world of sports leads me to repeat the claim about the sports industry’s potential future leadership role in relation to successful (social) CRM.

Below I have attempted to outline the proclaimed sports industry specific factors that can work as accelerators for rapid adoption of social media.

Once again I received one of those customer surveys via email from a company I have recently spent money with. After having submitted my feedback I reflected a bit over the structure of as well as the questions in the survey and wondered "what does this company actually know about me and my behavior now?"

Roughly, the 20 questions could be split into the following two categories:

Situation: Waiting at gate A18 at a European airport one Sunday evening – together with approximately 200 other passengers on their way home, going on vacation or getting ready for business meetings the following day at the destination. Unfortunately the airline ("RDA") is experiencing problems with the plane and the handling agent "Nova" informs passengers to wait at the gate where an update will be given an hour later. The scheduled evening departure means that there are no alternative flights that evening, so we all eagerly wait around for the update. A little less than an hour later a representative from another handling agent ("M.A.") shows up at the gate as another airline ("Pound") have a flight scheduled to use gate A18 an hour later. When the representative sees all the people already checked in, she demands that people leave the area!! Everyone is a bit surprised and a few ask questions whereas others informs the "M.A." rep that we have all been told to wait here for an update. Several discussions occur, people are quite confused, it is late Sunday evening and the response from the "M.A" rep is simply:

"You are not flying with my airline, I can’t help you, but I have a job to do here, so you need to talk to RDA"

Companies continuously run satisfaction surveys on their end customers – most of which are questions regarding product experience, price, service etc.

Besides the actual product features and quality which only part of an organization is responsible for, the large area of customer service is one that jumps to my mind when thinking about my satisfaction with a company/product? Even if I have had a bad experience with a company or its products, a high level of customer service by a call centre rep, a technician or whoever is solving my problem can bring my level of satisfaction back to where it once was – or potentially higher.

Several times over the past few weeks I have had to deal with service centers of large companies. Without going into details, I can say that out of the four companies (let us call them A, B, C and D) I contacted only "Company A" was able to restore my level of satisfaction to what it was prior to my problem – this was done through excellent customer service. "Company B" simply couldn´t solve the problem, "Company C" did solve it - but only after numerous calls and "Company D" is still looking into it and hopefully finding a solution!

These days customer relationship management (CRM) and providing better service to customers seems to be at the top of any company’s strategy and focus list. This trend is also present in the world of sports and entertainment, where sports clubs and other players in the entertainment industry are adopting new means to attract and retain customers in a world where entertainment itself is becoming more and more of a commodity.

An often misleading question is whether a company has adopted a CRM strategy or not? For sports clubs in particular the question that should be raised is where a club is on the "CRM journey" as all clubs find themselves somewhere along on the path of successful customer relations. The fact that sports clubs are drawing paying spectators at all is in itself part of a CRM strategy and as such it should be acknowledged that pursuing further benefits from CRM is not a matter of starting something up but is rather a matter of simply continuing the journey, adjusting or even speeding up where needed. As such, the question that is key to answer is where a sports club currently finds itself on this CRM journey?

Over the past decade investments in customer relationship management (CRM) strategies, applications and tools have primarily been driven by businesses within industries such as telecommunications, banking and manufacturing. At the same time we have witnessed a growing trend in the sports industry with sports clubs adopting the tools and tactics from the CRM world as they increasingly, and at all levels, are run more and more like other businesses. One reason for this trend within sports clubs is due to the competitive environment they are faced with as the entertainment industry offers a growing number of options and alternative ways in which a sports fan or a spectator can spend his or her money.

As companies are adopting strategies and initiatives that enable increased customer feedback to ensure that customer expectations are met – or exceeded – it appears that one initiative is taking customer interaction and impact of customers’ opinions on a company’s strategy one level further.

Myfootballclub.co.uk – an online initiative with a £35 ($70) membership fee – was launched in April 2007 with the intention of purchasing a football (soccer) club in England and have members directly impact the running of the club through online voting and discussions. Early 2008 myfootballclub.co.uk had raised enough money and decided to purchase Ebbsfleet United FC, a team in the fifth league in England. The goal is to make Ebbsfleet United FC more successful and move it upwards in the rankings and leagues of English football.

Over the past decades businesses have increased their investments in the customer relationship management (CRM) area. The investments range from strategy development to implementing software and other applications which will help attract new customers and keep and grow existing ones. In short, companies are trying to make us loyal, trying to get us to come back and do business with them over and over again, because they all know that it is much more expensive to attract a new customer compared to enticing an existing one back into their store, their bank or onto their airplane. But are we becoming more loyal? What would it take to convince a customer to switch airlines? A cheaper ticket? A more appealing loyalty program? A different departure time? Most customers would likely be convinced because of one of these reasons and make the switch. In today’s world with the vast array of competitive offers available on the market, it is an almost impossible task to create and sustain customer loyalty. Nevertheless companies are investing and dedicating a lot of their focus and resources to trying to get us to come back for more.