The San Antonio Spurs Transformed Season Ticket Transactions for a Better Fan Experience

About the San Antonio Spurs

Spurs Sports & Entertainment operates the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs along with the organization’s other properties, venues, and events. Within the organization, the Membership Service team oversees all Season Ticket Member accounts and relationships. The team sells season ticket packages, services accounts, and ensures that Members have an incredible experience and feel like they’re part of the Spurs family.

“The most important resource we have is time. Retell has provided us with a very innovative solution to optimize that time, provide the level of service that our clients have come to expect, and continue to drive revenue.”
Chris Monroe, Vice President of Membership, Spurs Sports & Entertainment

The Problem

A great deal of nurture activity tied to Membership relationships occurs over the phone. This includes renewals, payment follow-ups, reactivations, and the check-in calls that remind Members that it will soon be time to renew or pay their monthly invoice.

Payment follow-up is hard to scale. A representative trying to collect a balance due may spend most of their time not talking. They will dial, wait for the call to be connected, get voicemail, and leave a message. A few days later, they will have to go through that entire process yet again. Collecting even one balance might take a week of intermittent effort.

The Membership team was spending too much time on the phone, holding for unanswered calls and leaving voicemails. Outbound phone coverage was uneven. Balances aged past the point where a simple conversation would have resolved them. The organization lost revenue it had already booked, while Members had to juggle multiple communication touchpoints.

The Strategy & Innovation team found itself tasked with improving CX through deploying a better way of nurturing customer relationships. In this case, boosting headcount would not have been a sufficient fix. Instead, the team hoped to reach more Members while allowing the Account Reps to focus on more relationship-driven work.

The Membership team needed a better approach

The Spurs organization has encouraged all of its leaders to move early on the adoption of innovative new technologies. Adopting these technologies before the rest of the industry can provide the Spurs with an edge that allows them to do more with their existing staff.

Voice AI was an important item on the Innovation team’s adoption list. The request to utilize it came from the Membership Services team.

“It all started because our Membership services team asked us, ‘Hey, how can we use voice AI? How can we provide a better experience for our fans?’ Our organization has been charged for the past couple years to be on the bleeding edge of technology, and so we knew that this was the next frontier that we wanted to explore.”
John Mansour, Senior Innovation Manager, Spurs Sports & Entertainment

The Solution

The Spurs deployed a Retell voice agent, named Brianna, on outbound calls to Members who were carrying unpaid monthly balances on their season tickets.

Calls open with the account already loaded

Brianna does not “cold call” Members in a robotic fashion. She has the Member’s name, their balance, their assigned account representative, and their case history before the call connects. All of it comes directly from the Spurs CRM. She opens with that context instead of a recorded script. Members who are ready to settle their accounts get a secure payment link by text, while a Member who wants to ask more detailed questions from a representative gets transferred to that person.

Brianna can easily handle all the calls that go nowhere, which is important given that most outbound dials reach voicemail. She leaves a professional message and accurately logs every attempt. This sort of lower-value work could sometimes consume a representative’s entire afternoon.

“Not only was it quick to respond, but it also gave you the right information. It was very personalized, it gave you the context.”
Chris Monroe, Vice President of Membership, Spurs Sports & Entertainment

Compliance concerns were settled before the first dial

The Spurs reviewed the payment collection process for compliance before making any calls to Members. This review established what the agent can say, what it can collect, and where it must stop. A Member can clear their balance and keep their tickets active in a conversation that is recorded and logged.

Representatives handle the calls that need their attention

The handoff rules received considerable attention during setup. Brianna takes first contact, addresses the routine balance, and provides a payment link. However, the process of setting up a payment plan, which might be spread over a period of months, is something that a representative handles. So are disputed charges and the concerns of any Members who want a real conversation about their Membership. The representative receives this call transfer with the account already open and call history already logged, so they know exactly what the Member wants to discuss.

Retell was rapidly integrated with the Spurs internal systems

Although they encourage innovation, the Spurs are thoughtful about operational changes that could temporarily disrupt their successful business operations. They needed a short implementation period that would not require a dedicated team to keep the voice agent running.

Retell was quickly integrated and dialing within the Spurs existing technology stack, allowing everyone to iterate in real time against the needs of the business. The agent reads and writes to Microsoft Dynamics 365 through KORE Software Connect. Call outcomes and text follow-ups have continued to occur in the system that the Membership team was already using.

“We didn’t know if voice agents would work, but we were willing to test, and that’s why Retell was a great partner for us to be able to do that. They were willing to test with us and learn alongside us.”
John Mansour, Senior Innovation Manager, Spurs Sports & Entertainment

The Business Impact

The revenue that payment agreements recovered using Retell came to 504.7 times what the agent cost. The Spurs achieved this during the rollout and didn’t have to bother with a pilot year or phased rollout.

Brianna handled the tedious work of dialing, voicemail messages, and hold time. Representatives entered conversations with Members who had already agreed to talk or needed additional support. The team put recovered hours of human effort back into renewals, upgrades, and Member service.

Members who had an outstanding balance got faster support from an AI caller that came with reliable account context, along with a quick link to complete the renewal process. Many Members were happy to have such convenient, efficient reminder conversations.

“We’ve programmed and trained Retell voice agents to authentically deliver consistent and reliable messaging to our fans.”
Chris Monroe, Vice President of Membership, Spurs Sports & Entertainment

Teams, venues, and entertainment companies are all dealing with this same challenge. Their Member bases are often growing rapidly even as their service team headcount remains static. Despite this obvious issue, many organizations are still treating voice AI as something to look at next year. Innovators both on and off the court, the Spurs solved an industry-wide business problem with Retell in under four months.

What’s Next

Collections served as a starting point for future success. The agent, the CRM integration, and the compliance review are all in place, so additional use cases will start from a strong foundation.

The Spurs are extending the agent to other parts of the Membership operation and training their own staff to build and run agents in Retell directly. Given the organization’s championship credentials and dedication to fan experience, the sky’s the limit for the Spurs partnership with Retell.

“It was a great product that stood out among others, but the service and the people that we worked with at Retell to help bring it to life was really the win there.”
John Mansour, Senior Innovation Manager, Spurs Sports & Entertainment

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