South African Tourism turns to Salesforce for CRM during FIFA World Cup

The world cup is set to launch tomorrow in South Africa, with the first games of the tournament starting the same day.

The hugely anticipated football event is taking place on the African continent for the first time, and is expected to help further advance the country with upgrades in information systems, transit, among other infrastructure to support the influx of tourists who will be attending the games, and the thousands of other personnel part of the tournament.

In anticipation of the event, the South African Tourism ministry has announced it has implemented new CRM technologies powered by Salesforce (Server Cloud 2) that will be used to handle queries.

 Hundreds of thousands of fans will flock to the country specifically for the games, and the South African tourism ministry is ready to capitalize.

The ministry says the new technology will allow it to handle thousands of additional calls that will allow the ministry to provide help to fans, including travel directions, information, and various events fans could attend in cities across the continent where the games will be held.

The ministry says it expects up to 15,000 inbound phone calls each week during the World Cup tournament.

Additionally, the Salesforce CRM software includes real-time social networking features that will allow the ministry to monitor its Facebook page and Twitter trends that would allow it to anticipate and answer questions.

“With travel being a social experience unlike anything else, we want to provide amazing customer service with relevant, real-time, and easy-to-access information that helps people find the best there is to see and do in South Africa,” said South African Tourism.

South African Tourism says it plans to entirely phase out its legacy Microsoft CRM system that largely uses Excel, and it plans lower the number of Salesforce licenses after the tournament finishes to lower costs.