How the Oklahoma City Thunder are getting closer to fans with Microsoft Dynamics CRM

In 2008, when the Oklahoma City Thunder began building its NBA franchise, it wasn't just about building a great basketball team - it was also about generating and maintaining fan loyalty.

To that end, the team deployed Microsoft Dynamics CRM for sales and service to help personalize the fan experience and manage all aspects of fan satisfaction.

The OKC Thunder and their fans at a game (Source)

"Everything we do is about trying to create a genuine and meaningful relationship with our fans," says Scott Loft, vice president of Ticket Sales, Retention and Database Operations for Oklahoma City Thunder.

The Thunder - formerly the Seattle SuperSonics - used Dynamics CRM to create its fan site - myOKCThunder.com - that serves as the central repository to gather Thunder fans' demographic, geographic and sociographic information.

"The fans are what have made us so successful. Understanding their buying habits as well as their psychological and demographic habits and having it all in one place (the fan site) is what's really important for us so our account managers who manage the seasons ticket accounts can have all that information in one place," says Loft.

The Thunder selected Dynamics CRM - CRM 2011 was the current version at the time - over Salesforce.com because of its flexibility, ease of use, integration capabilities and lower total cost of ownership. They also liked that Dynamics CRM worked well with other Microsoft products like Outlook.

The Thunder wanted to use a Ticketmaster solution for ticketing, and Hitachi Solutions ...