In a research commissioned by Paywizard, European media operators indicate customer data analytics as its critical strategic aim
Despite ranking customer experience as a top strategic priority, European media operators admitted that they have yet to make effective use of subscriber data and analytics to engage consumers, according to a new research report, Customer analytics in the post-OTT age: Insights from European service providers.
Commissioned by Paywizard, the study includes interviews with C-level executives from broadcasters, pay-TV operators, telcos and over-the-top (OTT) service providers across Europe, who indicated their interest to increase their use of customer analytics over the next 12-18 months. The research further revealed that 80% of the respondents believe they are at the beginning of their customer analytics journey, and need to enhance their ability to analyse consumer data to ensure a “consistently good customer experience”.
Ben Keen, an independent technology and media analyst, also the author of the commissioned research report, commented: “The research report shows broadcasters and some standalone online video platforms are more advanced in their use of sophisticated analytics, while telcos struggle most to utilise customer data to advance their video businesses. The study also reveals that most operators do not even consider using data analysis to increase revenue from existing customers and, also surprisingly, few are employing analytics to improve billing accuracy, which previous research has shown to be a major annoyance for customers.”
The report identified crucial Decision Moments in the customer journey when analytics can be used to determine the right action at the right time. These key points include acquiring a new customer, tracking content consumption for recommendations and offers, upselling and cross-selling to enhance average per user, churn prediction and reduction, billing accuracy, and winning back lost subscribers.
To empower media companies with data-driven actions to engage subscribers, Paywizard developed Paywizard Singula, a standalone platform that utilises subscriber insights and artificial intelligence (AI) to recommend “next best actions” at each Decision Moment in the customer journey.
Bhavesh Vaghela, chief executive of Paywizard, concluded: “Lengthy interviews with the operators taking part in the study show clearly that virtually everyone providing a pay-TV service sees analytics as critical to understanding the customer journey and having the ability to take actions that enhance the customer experience — such as highly targeted offers and precisely-timed communications. But most still are unable to do that. There is a large gap between where operators are, and where they want to be.
“The research clearly demonstrates that customer experience has emerged as a key competitive differentiator in the pay-TV sector, with data analytics playing a critical role — but most TV and video operators do not have the tools they need to get through to customers. This analytics capability gap is the void Paywizard Singula can fill for operators capturing data on any platform.”
