Customer service and cable television have rarely been used together to form a positive sentence. However, a new study shows that customer service just might be the key to a successful television subscription company. Conversely, poor customer service seems to have a negative effect on subscriber retention rates.
A new survey by Paywizard found that 84% of the study’s participants say they would drop their pay-TV subscription solely based on poor customer service. As if that isn’t enough, 25% said that they had already gone and dropped their pay-TV subscription during the last year as a result of their providers inability to provide positive customer experiences.
The survey covered OTT operators like Amazon, Netflix and Hulu as well traditional pay-TV providers across six countries including, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Singapore, the U.K. and the United States. The data is based on 6,200 responses.
“We are seeing a fundamental shift taking place in the pay TV marketplace, with customer experience emerging as critical to television service providers’ success – in many cases, their very survival,” said Bhavesh Vaghela, chief marketing officer for Paywizard, according to BroadcastingCable.com. “While content and cost are often cited as the elements influencing pay TV uptake and cancellations, the survey findings demonstrate that customer experience has undeniably emerged as a major driver. This is particularly true for operators of over-the-top (OTT) services, as simply relying on a decent content offering is no longer nearly enough to build loyalty to your brand.”
As it turns out, this concern for customer service is most prevalent among the younger generation. 57% of those surveyed who are under 35 said that customer-service performance was a major factor in their decision to stay with a service provider over the last year. However, there is another side to this coin. Three out of four of those same customers said that they have actually increased their television spending based on positive customer experiences.
“The research leaves no doubt that to stay on the right side of the TV spend equation as more options emerge for consumers, all pay TV operators — particularly those that don’t tend to lock subscribers into fixed-term contracts, such as many OTT providers — need to ensure they take their brand beyond its content offering by providing consistently excellent customer experience,” Vaghela said.
Customer service is an important part of any company, but it may just be the key to a successful broadcasting one.
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