MSOs Shouldn't Fly Blind When The Phone Rings

By Kim Garner

Vice President, Product Marketing

 

By Kim Garner

TARGUSinfo (News - Alert)

 

Multi-System Operators spend billions to interest consumers in their voice, video and data services. MSOs cultivate huge databases of subscribers and prospects, then analyze, scrub and enhance the data in hopes that consumers will call to subscribe or that subscribers will call to upgrade. MSOs have gotten pretty good at this. Through the powers of database marketing, they know plenty about the consumers in their footprint and target them well.

 

One problem, however, is that as intelligent as they are, cable operators’ advertising and marketing efforts aren’t getting through like they used to. Consumers are filtering their advertising like never before. Do Not Call lists have squelched outbound telemarketing. TiVo has wounded TV advertising. XM Radio delivers a bounty of programming — ad free. There are even rumblings about a Do Not Mail list.

 

Meanwhile, consumers are getting smarter. They are now armed with loads of information, primarily from online sources, about the companies they call, the products they can get and what the competition is offering. A decade ago, if consumers wanted TV service, they just called their cable company and signed up. When consumers had options, they were typically under-informed about them. In today’s world, there’s ample information on the Internet about cable, emerging telco video offerings and satellite operators.

 

So what happens when the consumer takes the marketing bait and does call the cable operator? In many cases, the MSO is flying blind.

 

While a customer service agent can access records of current subscribers with an account number or home telephone number and gain some basic insights into the caller, non-subscribers are a blank slate. With consumers more informed than ever, both about you as well as your competition, the MSO is in a relative position of weakness. This is fine when a consumer is itching to spend money. But when a consumer is just offer shopping, the cable operator needs to be as effective in its response to inbound queries as it is in its outbound campaigns. One-size-fits-all offers to every caller don’t cut it anymore.

 

Consider two calls coming in at once, both from basic cable subscribers.

 

One comes in from a family of four with teen-age children. Teens are high consumers of Internet bandwidth. They’re always online, whether for social networking, gaming or schoolwork. The agent may offer this caller an opportunity to upgrade to the highest speed Internet service.

 

The other call comes in from one half of a senior citizen couple. Although they have basic cable like the first household, they have different needs. Are they gamers? If so, it’s probably just bridge. Do they have homework every night or instant messaging conversations they can’t tear themselves from? Probably not. These subscribers are less likely to be interested in high-speed Internet, but with grandkids potentially spread out across the country, an unlimited-calling deal can be very attractive. It’s something they might not have even known their cable company could offer them.

 

This kind of intelligent and effective response to inbound callers starts with finding a way to know as much about the consumer calling in as the consumer knows about the cable company. Unfortunately, this isn’t happening today. Cable operators are flying blind. Agents typically start by asking callers for contact information, with limited success. If the caller does provide this information, the agent looks the caller up on the billing system to see what services they have or what they are serviceable for. At this point, a well-trained agent can try to tailor a pitch on the fly. If the customer is a basic cable subscriber, for instance, the agent can pitch a premium package. The truth, however, is that most agents just follow the caller’s lead even when the caller is just kicking tires.

 

The bottom line is that cable operators, so good at outbound marketing, desperately need a way to be just as smart and agile when a consumer initiates the conversation. Cable operators need to leverage their existing investments in powerful backend marketing systems to seize the hot opportunities these systems have created.

 

MSOs can begin to reclaim their competitive advantage by automatically assembling information on callers before answering the ringing phone. Services are available that deliver, in subsecond time, a verified name and postal address based on the phone number calling in. It’s no more difficult to add basic demographic information on the caller — e.g., age, income and household composition — in that same instant.

 

These basic bits of information, delivered on demand, can trigger powerful, on-the-fly marketing processes that leverage the very same systems normally used for outbound direct marketing campaigns. Rather than having agents reading the tea leaves in a billing system, on-demand contact information and demographics can be used to trigger, say, a tiered list of offers customized for each caller to be displayed on the agent’s screen.

 

These offers should draw upon the MSO’s “homes passed database” so that any conversations take place in the context of which services the caller already has and/or what services he or she is eligible for. Similarly, cable operators can use the real-time demographic information, delivered on demand, to route high potential callers to the most experienced and effective agents. It’s no longer one size fits all.

 

Please realize that none of this marketing agility requires a new huge investment — it simply leverages the powerful outbound marketing systems cable operators have already developed and paid for. It’s like putting a second entrance on your house versus building a new home.

 

The second entrance gives cable operators a new way to efficiently compete against telcos and a rare chance to double the return on their marketing investments. Agents can now answer the phone with greater knowledge about the person on the other end, restoring the balance of power and capitalizing on consumer interest at the moment of highest impact.

 

Kim Garner ([email protected]) is vice president of product marketing for TARGUSinfo (www.TARGUSinfo.com), the leading provider of On-Demand Data services for consumer-facing businesses.