FC Augsburg isn't just an established part of the Bundesliga – it's also a club with a large, dedicated fan base. Alongside sporting success, the club places great value on professional, modern fan communication – in the stadium and digitally. With the launch of its internally and externally used chatbot including ticket automation on February 4, 2025, FCA took a decisive step to take its service to the next level.
The challenge: fan service around the clock
Like many football clubs, FC Augsburg faced the challenge of efficiently handling a growing number of fan requests. Questions about ticketing, match results, memberships and general club information came up especially often. These topics lead to sharply higher request volumes, especially on match days or after major events.
To cut waiting times, relieve the service team and offer fans a 24/7 experience, FCA decided to introduce an AI chatbot with ticket automation in Salesforce.
The solution: automation with Salesforce integration
Since February 2025, the chatbot has answered all standard requests in real time. Thanks to the direct connection to Salesforce, requests are not only recognized but also handled automatically. Fans get instant answers, while only more complex cases are passed to human support.
The chatbot serves both external fans and internal processes, ensuring communication, ticketing and club information are reliable, consistent and available in top quality.
The results: impressive figures since go-live
The first weeks after launch show impressively how much value the chatbot delivers:
- 94.3% recognition rate – the system understands almost every request precisely.
- 94.1% automation rate – almost all requests are answered automatically.
- Only 1.3% human handover – an extremely low figure that shows how mature the system is.
- 12,906 conversations with a total of 8,650 users since go-live.
- 0 seconds waiting time – fans get answers instantly, without delay.
Especially striking is the high usage in core topic areas:
- Ticketing: 4,107 requests
- Players & match results: 2,661 requests
- Membership & club info: 1,060 requests
Efficiency gain: noticeable relief for support
Automation hasn't just won over the fans – it has also taken a huge load off the service team. With an automation rate of over 94%, the chatbot does most of the work.
- Time saved: at an average of 5 minutes per ticket, over 1,012 hours of support work have been handled automatically since February.
- That already equals 6.3 full-time equivalents (FTE) per month.
- Extrapolated, that's relief of around 75 FTE-month equivalents per year (at constant conversation volume) – without hiring additional staff.
The club not only saves costs but also increases employee satisfaction, since staff can now focus on personal, complex requests.
Better fan experience: faster, more direct, more modern
For fans, the chatbot means a whole new experience:
- Real-time answers instead of minutes or hours of waiting.
- Available around the clock, including match days and outside opening hours.
- Consistent quality, no matter when or how often a question is asked.
The chatbot becomes a digital service assistant that meets fans right where their questions come up.
Outlook: expanding automation
The journey is far from over for FC Augsburg. The club is expanding internal use of the chatbot and working to use automated ticket handling in Salesforce even more comprehensively.
This lays the foundation for continuously improving service quality – and proves how AI-based automation is transforming customer service in professional sports.
Conclusion
With its chatbot and Salesforce ticket automation, FC Augsburg has shown what modern fan service can look like in the digital age. High automation rates, instant answers, significant relief for the service team – all of this ensures fans are well looked after around the clock and the club uses its resources more efficiently.
