As the pay TV business moves through its latest evolution, the product emphasis is primarily on speed and choice. But as subscription TV service gets more complicated — Verizon Communications’s Fios Mix & Match offering is the latest step toward the Holy Grail of a la carte programming — so, too, do the more mundane aspects of the business, like how to collect payment for the myriad content opportunities presented to consumers.

There is a handful of vendors that have controlled cable billing since the industry began, with CSG Systems, Amdocs and NEC’s Netcracker being among the largest. But as offerings continue to grow, so does the danger of confusing the customer. And for just about any industry, billing confusion and questions are usually at the top of the list when it comes to poor customer satisfaction.

On the surface, billing seems to be relatively straightforward: You order a package and you pay for it. But with telecom companies, there is a slew of hidden charges, fees, promotional offers and pricing that can puff up a monthly bill almost beyond recognition. And with the future expected to be rife with choice, that also means there are more opportunities to disrupt the relationship.

Top Reason for Customer Calls

“It's pretty much common knowledge that questions about billing are one of the top reasons for subscribers contacting their operator,” said Dr. Charles Patti, Cox chair in customer experience and senior fellow at The Cable Center in Denver.

In a September 2019 ranking of television service providers by J.D. Power, companies with a high number of billing complaints ranked low on the customer loyalty scale. Per J.D. Power, nearly 40% of television and internet customers who had a high bill complaint said they didn’t achieve a resolution. Additionally, 52% of internet subscribers who had a high bill complaint said they would switch carriers.

Cable did a lot better in the J.D. Power rankings as an internet provider than as a video distributor. Comcast was No. 1 in the North Central region among internet providers, No. 2 (behind AT&T) in the North Central and the South and No. 3 (behind AT&T and Cable One) in the West. But it ranked fifth in the East, third in the South, North Central and West regions as a television provider.

Part of that has to do with customer perceptions and the higher cost of cable video service (because of higher programming costs), as well as past federal fines for charging customers for services and equipment they didn’t authorize.

“Taking every opportunity to demonstrate transparency is a customer-focused outlook that improves the overall customer experience,” Ian Greenblatt, J.D. Power managing director and practice leader, technology, media and telecom intelligence, said in a press release announcing the rankings last year.

About 65% of North American pay TV subscribers run on CSG platforms, and the company counts Comcast, Charter Communications and most of the other large cable operators as customers, as well as about 20 direct-to-consumer platforms in the over-the-top space.

Billing questions are still at the top of customer complaints, said CSG head of global product management Chad Dunavant, and operators are making changes, especially around the concept of prorating. That can be the culprit when a customer calls to complain that they signed up for a $99 service, yet their first bill was much higher, he said.

Operators are either removing prorates and providing service for no cost during the time that the billing dates differ, or aligning the dates programmatically as part of the order process.

“Customers are more comfortable with the subscription model due to new entrants and are OK having service through the date of their service," Dunavant said. “Moreover, operators are starting to play around with base packages that have a recurring billing relationship and then ala carte services that are sold directly through a credit card with a separate billing relationship. All of these models are things the billing systems can support, and areas CSG has invested in to ensure our operator customers can meet the demands of the market.”

One thing CSG is doing to simplify the process is a product it calls the “video bill,” where it sends out a personalized interactive video tutorial of what a customer’s first bill looks like.

“We send out emails when you order; we send out emails when your statement processes; we send out emails when your second statement processes,” Dunavant said. “There are all of these interactions to try to make it easier for consumers to understand. As a la carte rolls out and is adopted, those techniques will become even more important.”

Comcast began implementing the video bill in 2015, spokesperson Katie Lubenow said. Customers can access it through the MyAccount app, by saying “explain my bill” into their X1 Voice Remote or through the Xfinity Assistant, an always-on virtual assistant that customers can access online or via the Xfinity mobile app.

Charter has a similar customer video on its website that breaks down billing statements. Elsewhere on its website, it explains the vagaries of franchise fees, sales taxes and other charges.

In 2018, Comcast redesigned its billing statements, with the help of customer feedback, to make them easier to read and understand. Bills broke out one-time and recurring charges and highlighted changes in service.

“We believe in a clear, transparent billing experience for our customers,” Lubenow said, adding that the changes have resulted in reduced calls about billing problems.

That could get a little more difficult as the video business evolves into a more a la carte model.

“We’ve definitely seen the industry evolve from just something that was basic pay television to cable television that included a lot more bundling and cross-promotional discounts into a multi-line-of-business universe,” Dunavant said. About six years ago, he said, CSG began offering an OTT billing product, and the move toward direct-to-consumer distribution actually simplifies the billing process.

“On the OTT front specifically, it’s less complex,” Dunavant said. “Typically with OTT, you’re dealing directly with a content provider or a studio, not an aggregator, so the plans are much simpler. And the way you think about billing is simpler, because in most cases they are just doing credit card-only. You’re looking at a line item that might show up on a credit card for $9.99 per month and it shows a content distributor on that line item. It’s pretty simple, versus these large-scale bundles that have multiple line items and franchise taxes and everything else that goes with it.”

While the Fios Mix & Match offering is seen by some as the next step toward a la carte, Sanford Bernstein media analyst Peter Supino wrote in a note to clients that the offering is more “evolution, not revolution.”

“With ‘custom’ video bundles, the marginal video customer gets what he/she wants (to not buy things that they won't watch), while Verizon optimizes its per subscriber video costs,” Supino wrote. “This additional margin opportunity funds Verizon's elimination of video's infamous add-on service fees (but NOT set-top box rentals charges).”

The Experience in Canada

A la carte, to some, is an inevitability, and CSG is already traveling down that road. Among its customers are Canadian operators that have been offering a la carte programming to customers since 2016 as part of a government mandate.

So far, a la carte hasn’t been a challenge on the billing side, Dunavant said, because not that many Canadian customers are taking advantage of it. Those who do are only selecting a few channels.

“We haven’t seen a huge uptake yet,” Dunavant said.

But in a scenario where customers are selecting hundreds of a la carte channels, it gets a lot trickier.

“That becomes complex, because now every single channel has a price,” Dunavant said. “And how do you display that to a call center agent or how do you display that to a customer?

“One of the things we’ve done within our applications is to put in search functions and put in toggles that allow you to group channels together and make it easier to find and identify the channels that you need,” he continued. “The other part of the challenge is how does that get displayed on a bill.

“Imagine a situation where somebody picked 100 a la carte channels. Now you have 100 line items on a bill for each a la carte channel,” Dunavant said. “When you’re doing a statement run and are trying to keep your costs down, that becomes costly.”

Cable operators, long used to suffering the slings and arrows of outraged customers during service glitches and outages, have increasingly worked to make it easier for subscribers to solve their own problems quickly, efficiently and accurately. At Mediacom Communications, the fifth-largest cable operator in the country with about 1.4 million customer relationships (mostly in the Midwest), the solution has been to develop and implement digital tools that speed up the journey toward satisfying service questions. One of those tools is an AI-based virtual assistant, dubbed “Molli,” currently part of Mediacom’s SMS text messaging system and geared to help customers navigate their way toward quick answers to their service questions. Multichannel News spoke with Mediacom senior vice president of customer service and financial operations Tapan Dandnaik about Molli and the operator’s customer care philosophy.

MCN: Tell me what you see as the latest trends in customer care for cable?
Tapan Dandnaik: Our philosophy is we have to be where the customer is, and we have to provide a customer experience that really results in the least amount of customer effort. From a measurement perspective, if it takes a customer five attempts to resolve something, if we can resolve it in one try, then that is a reduced effort. If we can do it in a way where we can engage it through a chat session or SMS text on their phone without having them to engage with an agent, or not engage with an agent, but get to the right answers.

We just recently launched our virtual assistant called Molli. When a customer engages with SMS, they first speak to Molli, and if Molli can’t answer the question we send them to a live agent. But the agent interacts with the customer via SMS from their dashboard, the same dashboard they would use if the customer called on the phone. We’ve been training Molli side-by-side with our agents and the early results are extremely promising. She is basically able to handle 70% to 75% of the conversations and only 25% [need to get] our agents involved. So, if you have 100 people chatting with Molli, only 25 are going to an agent where Molli cannot help, and we hope to improve on that.

MCN: What’s the technology behind that?
TD: We’ve engaged with a company called Twilio that provides the infrastructure for Molli, but the actual training and the coding and the learning for Molli is stuff that we’ve done internally. [Senior VP of information technology] Peter Lyons and [group VP, customer service and field support operations] Jon Coscia were a big part of the development.

The way Molli works, we have a Mediacom SMS text number and when a customer that is enrolled in Mediacom’s SMS texts us, Molli will greet them as “Hi I’m Molli, I’m Mediacom’s virtual assistant. How can I help you today?” Molli will go through and essentially help with paying bills, help schedule an appointment, she can find out if the tech is going to arrive at a certain time. If there are certain specific things that Molli is not trained for, then Molli will escalate [the call] to an agent, then the agent will reply and continue the conversation with the customer.

To the customer, the SMS trail will remain; it will never get lost. The agent can pick up where Molli left off and we don’t have to verify, we don’t have to do all the other things you have to do when you have a transfer happening on a phone call. It’s a really seamless experience and the agents that work in the platform love it, and our customers seem to be extremely surprised positively when Molli is answering them.

MCN: Does the name stand for something?
TD: No. We initially thought of making it stand for something, but ultimately Molli was a name our employees picked. We felt it was one of the names that led to a personality description that we wanted to have for our virtual assistant. We wanted our virtual assistant to be empathetic, super-smart, helpful. When we pitched those to our teams, Molli was the name that came out.

MCN: How has Molli been working out?
TD: Molli is doing about 2,000 to 3,000 transactions per day. This is two-way text care, SMS care — the idea being that people don’t want to be on the phone, they want the ability to chat. If you have kids, they don’t want to talk with you, they want to text with you. We have something that we are piloting and testing pretty aggressively and launching in the next week or two weeks — Xtreme View — which shows customers on the app when their technician is arriving in their neighborhood. Molli will be able to provide that kind of information and also say, your tech is about 25 minutes away from your house, they are on this road or that road. As we develop more products on the platform, we’re able to turn on Molli for those things as well.

MCN: So it’s expandable?
TD: Absolutely. I don’t see Molli not being able to do what our agents do. Ultimately our objective is for customers who are not comfortable interacting with Molli, we want to make sure we get them to an agent. Our goal is to get the customer the answer in the fastest way possibly and in the most appropriate way possible.

MCN: Has your focus on digital tools had any impact in terms of reduced truck rolls or calls?
TD: Mediacom is having one of its best years in terms of operations. We believe in an omnichannel approach that delivers to the best extent possible a frictionless customer journey and [we are investing] — about $1 billion over three years — in our business and particularly in our customer-facing digital platforms. Call volume is trending down to low double digits year over year, and the number of interactions on our digital platforms, which includes our Support site, mobile app, two-way SMS [including Molli, which just started] is already over one-third of the total customer contacts and has increased by more than 50% year over year.

All of those things are telling me that we are on the right track and that’s leading to higher customer satisfaction and a better overall customer perception of the company.

MCN: Other operators have used SMS for customer service with live CSRs. What makes Molli so special?
TD: We’re giving Molli a personality, so at some point if you want to ask her about the weather, she can chit-chat with you. One of the things we’re building — it’s in development — but if someone does ask Molli, we want to give her a background, how she was born, how she was created. We don’t want to hide anything — we up front say that she’s a virtual assistant.

With AI and predictive analysis we want to improve things like the ability to look at and triage credits and how we get that to customers quickly. We want to have Molli help with e-commerce, so if a customer wants to upgrade we can have Molli get involved with that. And then we want to bring the same technology into Apple’s new iMessage, Facebook Messenger, What’s App, Alexa. We are a small company, but there are a lot of things we have in the pipeline.

MCN: How long has Molli been available?
TD: We started piloting it softly in August and we’ve turned it on to a group of agents probably a couple of weeks ago. We’ve been doing this for two or three months and we have the data for two or three months. We haven’t formally announced it to customers because we wanted to make sure we didn’t have any missteps. One of the things with digital tools, you want to make sure you do it correctly, otherwise you take a couple of steps backward.

MCN: When is she going to be available system-wide?
TD: It’s going to be a process over the next two or three months. We’re going to grow into it. You have to enroll into our SMS to be able to communicate with Molli, because we want to make sure we get your opt-ins and approvals and all of the things that go with that.

You’ve got to have a great product set, which we think we do. We have the TiVo platform and were the first cable provider to have 1-Gig [Gigabit per second broadband] across the company. Our networks are getting better and [more] reliable; we’ve invested close to $1 billion [over three years in network improvements]. Our customer effort is getting better because we’re doing things that customers don’t have to expend a lot of energy to do — digital tools, texting and getting a quick answer, as opposed to picking up the phone. No one wants to pick up the phone these days.

Charter Communications is shuttering customer service centers in Detroit and Indianapolis, impacting the jobs of at least 140 workers.

The operator notified workers in two customer care centers on June 28, giving them two months notice of the expected Aug. 28 office closures.

Charter reps say the reorganization is part of a strategy of consolidating customer care activities into larger call centers. 

Related: Charter to Shed 258 Accountants, Finance Workers in North Carolina

“An important part of Spectrum’s strategy for providing better customer service is larger call centers, where we can deliver information, training and technology to our representatives much more efficiently,” the company said in a statement. “At the same time, we know this is a difficult time for our employees in location affected by this decision. We are working directly with them to provide comprehensive severance benefits, including salary continuation, health insurance and outplacement services.”

In the Detroit suburb of Livonia, the customer support unit at 14525 Farmington Road will close, with 60 workers laid off. Charter will not, however, close the entire office.

The same strategy is being plied to Charter’s office at 3030 Roosevelt Ave. in Indianapolis, where 84 customer care workers will lose their jobs.

In Grand Rapids, 51 sales employees were impacted by a separate shuttering in June. Many of those workers have been repositioned, Charter said.

When it closed on its purchases of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks in 2016, Charter said it would repatriate approximately 20,000 customer care jobs from overseas.

“Our customers are contacting us less, which means that they're having less service issues, service disruption, less billing related calls, less retention related calls,” Charter CFO Christopher Winfrey conceded during Charter Q2 earnings call last month. 

After decades of trying to boost its status among its competitors in the pay TV service industry, cable companies believe they have finally found the answer to better customer care: take the cable out of cable TV. It’s not as easy as it sounds. 

But after years of laying the groundwork by building fiber networks that anticipated service outages before they happened, promoting technology and equipment that made accessing TV content and the internet easier and faster and shortening appointment windows to one or two hours instead of a full day, cable is moving toward a time when customers will be able to buy, provision, troubleshoot and repair service almost entirely by themselves.

Related: Cable’s Retail Efforts Take Center Stage

That is the path the banking industry — once at the bottom of customer satisfaction rankings and now near the top — has taken over the years, starting with ATMs and evolving into allowing customers to pay bills, transfer money and apply for new credit online.

To an extent, it’s already happening in the cable business. Customers can now provision some services online, and with technology like Comcast’s X1 operating system, Charter’s upcoming Worldbox and Altice USA’s Altice One hub, the era of plug-and-play cable service and provisioning is coming quickly. For some, it couldn’t come soon enough.

A Do-It-Yourself Era

“Ultimately, the idea is for us to go full self-install,” Altice USA chairman and CEO Dexter Goei said at the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media & Communications conference earlier this month. “You should be able to connect your headless gateway at your drop, push a button … [plug] in your mini-box into your TV and into the wall for power, and should be able to self-provision everything.

“Every incidence going forward should be able to be dealt with remotely,” he said. “Unless there is a fault in the box itself, where we have to replace the box, nothing should require a customer technician coming into your home anymore.”

Altice USA is in the middle of a company-wide fiber buildout, dubbed Generation Gigaspeed, that will bring fiber to the home to all of the company’s 4.6 million customers in the next five years.

Cable has made some monumental strides in the past several years. Appointment windows are now from one to two hours in length, shaved down from windows of eight to 12 hours. Customers can now use their cellphones to track technicians and upgrade internet service speeds or add additional channels via the cable box. Yet cable continues to rate near the bottom of customer care lists compiled by independent researchers.

According to The Temkin Group, an independent customer care consultant in Waban, Mass., cable has consistently placed near the bottom of the company’s independent surveys. In its latest — the March 2018 Temkin Experience Report — cable again brought up the rear, running neck and neck with used car dealers, no-frills airlines and health-care insurers in almost every major category.

Best Efforts:In the March 2018 Temkin Experience Report, cable placed at the bottom of the list when customers were asked how easy it was to interact with the company. (Source: The Temkin Group)

Cable operators have taken customer care seriously for decades. To share ideas and concepts, the industry has formed the Cable Center Customer Care Committee (C5), a consortium of executives from the largest operators in North America and Europe that is focused on expanding industry knowledge and facilitating new approaches to customer care. Dr. Charles Patti, a University of Denver and Queensland University of Technology professor emeritus and the James M. Cox professor of customer experience management and senior fellow at The Cable Center, leads the C5 efforts.

In the past, Patti told Multichannel News, cable’s customer care efforts were centered on Net Promoter Scores (NPS), which are determined when customers get asked how much they would recommend a service on a scale of one to 10. While NPS still plays an important role, other metrics and terms are beginning to creep their way into cable’s customer care vocabulary. In the future, terms such as “Trust,” “Effort,” “Likability” and “Forgiveness” will become mainstays in the cable dictionary.

All About the Journey

Patti said the focus now in the cable industry is on the “customer journey,” or how a subscriber to cable services gets to where they currently are in the relationship. Making sure their travels are enjoyable should be a top priority for every cable company.

Patti said other industries have used more emotional terms to measure their customer care success, including banks, retailers, supermarkets and fast food companies.

“You’re trying to find the relationships between the measures that you use,” he said. “The downside of Net Promoter Score — it’s essentially one question: How likely is it that you would recommend Comcast, Cox, whatever, on a scale of 1-10? But it doesn’t tell you why, just how likely are you to recommend. There may be 50 different things going through your mind, as a responder, as to why you’re saying that.”

Those can be addressed in additional questions. NPS has a transaction score, which could ask for customers to base their recommendation on an installer visit. If that score is low, then the company knows it may have to offer additional training to that installer.

That inquiry, too, can lead a customer down a rabbit hole. Maybe the installer was late for the appointment, but he or she fixed the problem quickly.

Sweet Smell of Success:Asked to what degree customers were able to accomplish what they set out to do with a company, cable firms again did poorly. (Source: The Temkin Group)

“That’s why companies will look at multiple measures, because if you improve effort, then you’re natural inclination should be, what is the relationship between that and my Net Promoter Score?” Patti said. “Is it increasing? If it’s not, then I have something else I have to explore.”

At Medallia, a customer-care software vendor that counts Comcast among its clients, senior customer care principal Brian Andrews said 60% to 70% of his company’s customers still use NPS as the primary metric, and for many it is a fine way to determine how a company stacks up against the competition.

“You have a group of customers that love them, a group of customers that hate them, and a group of customers that are in between,” Andrews said. “It’s a fairly easy concept to understand. You want to reduce the number that hate you.”

Companies find out quickly that customer care isn’t quite that cut and dried.

“If you are a customer and you’re dealing with cable company A, and you have an issue and call in, your likelihood to recommend is probably not going to be based on that one agent and that one call,” Andrews said. “It tends to be over time.”

Better NPS scores can come from reducing the effort a customer must exert to get their issue resolved, not having them answer the same questions repeatedly and making the overall experience as enjoyable as possible.

“You generally want less friction,” Andrews said.

Emotional Rescue:Asked to think about how they felt with their interactions with the company over the last 60 days, cable companies trailed the pack. (Source: The Temkin Group)

Patti said cable can learn from other industries and from competitors. Companies like Uber, Amazon Prime and Netflix made their mark initially through ease of use and lower prices. Cable companies are starting to take the hint. Comcast even bundles Netflix with its broadband service, something that would have been unheard of just a few years ago.

“It’s really what is the customer’s experience from end-to-end, how do we modify processes to simplify the customer experience, minimize any challenge points for the customers and create an experience that makes it easy for them,” Cox Communications, senior vice president of customer care Peter Lilly said. “The journey work is a big part of what we’re doing and it’s informing all of the other initiatives that we’re spinning up after the fact.”

One of those initiatives is alternate channel support, where Cox is using social media to help customer better interact with the company. While Twitter and Facebook are what most people think of when they think of social media, Lilly said Cox is giving customers the option to online chat or text with an agent rather than calling on the phone and waiting on hold.

Case management, or how the company gets to know each customer’s habits, is also important, he said. If a customer starts out on an online web or chat channel and then calls a support center on the phone, Cox will be able to transfer the information so it doesn’t have to repeatedly ask that customer the same questions.

Tracking Customer Questions

“In today’s world, it’s not uncommon that we would have to ask the same question a couple of times,” Lilly said. “In the future we hope we can eliminate or minimize the need for that. As you expand case management out further it points to the future, which is allowing customers to self-help.”

For Cox, the decision to license Comcast’s X1 operating system — to power Cox’s Contour platform — was also a big step toward improving the overall experience, with voice activated remotes and a better user interface that integrates services like Netflix and YouTube. Net Promoter Scores have risen 200% since Cox introduced Contour, MSO spokesman Todd Smith said.

“I think that has certainly changed the experience for the customer,” Lilly said. “It certainly has changed the way we support customers, because we’re getting questions and issues that we never had before, but in many ways they are easier to resolve than in the old days, and it’s more of an educational solution than a technical problem.”

Gateway devices like the Panoramic WiFi, which enables wireless home connectivity and will allow the company to launch wireless boxes and expand the level of services it provides on the road to self-help.

“Whether it’s web or mobile web, applications need to be really tight,” Lilly said. “As you expand your services, customers don’t want to call you for everything. They want to be able to resolve their issues themselves and be able to learn and use the products, because they’re simple and easy.”

Hulu on Tuesday (November 28) opened the doors to its “Viewer Operations Experience” HQ, a building in San Antonio, Texas, that spans 45,000 square feet across two floors and today employs more than 300.

Hulu announced plans for the new facility in April, noting then that more than 500 jobs are projected to be based there by later next year. The building, Hulu’s second largest following its Santa Monica HQ, is opening more than six months after Hulu beta-launched its new live TV service.

The new San Antonio building, which is about three times larger than the temporary site Hulu first used in the city, is home to the company’s customer-focused functions, including customer support operations and service and network operations. In August, Hulu announced the hiring of Linda Cardenas as head of viewer experience operations, who leads Hulu’s viewer experience team in San Antonio.

Hulu’s capital investment in the new headquarters is expected to exceed $13 million, San Antonio Express-News reported, citing Texas Enterprise Fund records. Cardenas also told the paper that about 30 of Hulu’s employees moved from California to work at the new facility in San Antonio.

Hulu notes that the new facility has more than 400 desks, with 351 that are “hotel” desks that are shared by “Advocates” across s shifts. Conference rooms there are named after San Antonio landmarks, Marvel superheroes and Mexican loteria, a Bingo-style game that uses images on a deck of cards, with each image having its own assigned name and number.

Among other elements, Hulu’s new building has a training room with a movable wall and uses infrared technology that can sense when it’s being used as one or two rooms, and an operations center/command center with 12 screens that monitor Hulu’s service 24/7. 

The facility also has a gender-neutral restroom, a game room with massage chairs and arcade and board games, and a “micro-market” that offers lunch and snack options around the clock. 

Glympse said its location technology is powering some recently launched tech-tracker apps from Rogers Communications, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, which is now part of Charter Communications.

Of that group, Rogers has begun to roll out a version called EnRoute that keeps customers apprised by sending an appointment reminder the day of a scheduled appointment, and another when a tech has been dispatched to the address, and a real-time map that tracks the progress of the technician’s arrival time. Rogers has rolled it out in Hamilton, Ontario, and expects to offer it across its residential footprint by early 2017. Rogers’s Fido mobile/wireless unit is also using Glympse’s platform for Internet customers.

Time Warner Cable went wide with its “TechTracker” app last year. Comcast began to expand the reach of its “Tech ETA” offering last year.

Such customer service features are becoming more commonplace. Dish Network rolled out its version, called “My Tech,” in 2015.

Other Glympse customers include Blackberry, Ford, Garmin, GM, Gogo Inflight, Peggle, Samsung, Verizon and Vodafone, among others, and counts Verizon Ventures among its financial backers.

CallVU, an Israel-based developer of mobile digital  platforms for contact centers, said it has raised $3 million from a group of investors led by Liberty Global Ventures, the VC arm of Liberty Global, After Dox Angel Investment Group, 2B Angels and NICE.

CallVU said it will use the funds and a partnership with NICE, a big data company, to develop a joint approach aimed at expanding CallVU's reach and to expand abroad.

CallVU said its platform targets the need to divert customers to mobile digital self-service, and counts banks, credit card companies and telecom carriers among its customers. 

"Our primary objective at Liberty Global Ventures is to discover new, innovative and interesting solutions that are directly relevant to our core business," Bruce Dines, vice president of Liberty Global Investment Group, said in a statement. "CallVU certainly fits into that category, and we are excited to support the company as it differentiates itself in both feature/functionality, customer service and digital engagement."

Here’s a somewhat dated video about CallVU

Comcast said it expects to hire 600 new employees for technical product and service support for a new 80,000 square-foot facility it’s upgrading in Fort Collins, Colo.

Comcast said the call center is scheduled to open within a year after “significant upgrades” are made to the facility on the Hewlett Packard campus at 3420 East Harmony Road. Comcast plans to start advertising and posting new positions for the facility later this year.

When the new center is up and running, Comcast estimates it will have more than 8,000 employees across the state, including more than 700 in Northern Colorado.  Comcast said it has spent more than $7 billion in its tech infrastructure in the state since 1996, including more than $300 million in the last five years.

The announcement for the Ft. Collins facility comes about a year afterComcast kicked off a major customer care initiative that will include the hiring of 5,500 customer service reps over a span of about three years.  New Comcast customer support centers have opened and are operational in Albuquerque, N.M.; Spokane, Wash.; and Tucson, Ariz.  Last month, it picked Charlotte, S.C., for another customer support center site.

The plan for Ft. Collins received praise from local leaders.

"Colorado is thrilled to see continued growth of Comcast in our community,” said Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, in a statement. “With over 8,000 employees in the state, Comcast is a significant employer and partner to Colorado's success. The company's expansion in Fort Collins is a testament to the state's talented workforce and collaborative spirit."

“Comcast’s decision to move this customer service and technical support center here reinforces the supportive business environment in Fort Collins. The addition of these jobs in our community will ensure that we continue to provide a diversity of employment opportunities in the region,” added Fort Collins Mayor Wade Troxell.

“The new Fort Collins customer support center is integral to Comcast’s multi-year strategy to reinvent the customer experience and create a culture of exceeding customers’ expectations,” said Rich Jennings, Comcast Senior Vice President Mountain West Region. “We’re excited to hire 600 employees and give them the training and tools they need to be successful in ensuring every customer’s experience is excellent.”

UXP Systems, a Toronto-based company that specializes in multiscreen user experience software and technologies,  said Vodafone Group has picked the vendor’s MINT Digital Experience Engine to unify user-based access to existing services while also setting the foundation for new cloud, over-the-top and “connected life” services.

Vodafone will initially launch the MINT Digital Experience Engine in Germany.

According to the companies, the setup will enable Vodafone users to self-manage services across fixed and wireless, and provide “federated identity across different user aliases” across devices and networks, including the GSMA Mobile Connect standard.

Cable industry pioneers John Malone and John Risley recently made personal investments in UXP Systems, which also counts customers such as Cable & Wireless, Rogers Communications, Telus and CenturyLink.

Expanding into a new line of business, Dish Network  said it has deployed its national fleet of professional technicians to repair iPhones for consumers and business users, whether or not they get service from Dish.

Coverage all 50 states, Dish’s new Smart Phone Repair service will fix  cracked screens and replace batteries on several Apple iPhone models, including the iPhone 5, 5c, 5s, 6 and 6 Plus. Dish currently doesn’t fix Android devices, but noted in its announcement that it plans to expand service to include other devices and smartphone accessories in the coming months.

Dish said the new service aims to eliminate the hassle and uncertainty of smartphone repair using transparent pricing and its pro techs, while using “high-quality replacement parts from respected third parties.” Dish sees its on-site capabilities as a key differentiator particularly in the area of convenience.

Dish also outlined fixed pricing on its services (see below), which include a $35 “Drive to Me” fee. For example, repairing a screen for an iPhone 6 Plus costs $184.99, while a battery replacement for a supported iPhone models costs $74.99.

Dish added that it also offers appointments seven days a week, including same-day and next-day availability, and offers a 60-day warranty on all repair work. The service also works with Dish’s “My Tech” app, a tool that provides info on the repair tech assigned to them and a way to track the progress of the technician’s vehicle.

Dish said it also offers onsite corporate events for large-scale repairs on enterprise smartphones and employees’ personal devices.

The new service will compete with Apple’s own repair program. Per Apple’s support site, fixing a screen for an iPhone6 Plus costs $99 with AppleCare+, or $149 without, for example.  Battery replacements on all models are no cost if the device is still under warranty or covered by AppleCare+, or $79 if the device is out of warranty. Apple lets customers bring a device in for repair at Apple Stores or by sending it in, with a turnaround of three to five business days. Dish’s service will also come up against retail specialists such as BatteriesPlus, which also repairs iPhone screens and installs new batteries if customers bring them in to physical store locations. 

“Fixing your phone shouldn’t mean losing your phone for days on end, so we come to you – whether you’re at the office, the gym or even the coffee shop,” John Swieringa, Dish’s executive vice president of operations, said in a statement. “DISH is uniquely positioned with the technical know-how and ability to respond to a customer’s needs in every state across the country. Instead of paying $650 or more to replace a smartphone, our technicians step in to extend the life of the phone when a screen shatters or a battery loses its charge."

Here’s the initial pricing on Dish’s new smartphone repair service:

-Screen repair for iPhone 6 Plus: $184.99

-Screen repair for iPhone 6: $154.99

-Screen repair for iPhone 5s, 5c, or 5: $134.99

-Battery replacement for iPhone 6 Plus, 6, 5s, 5c, and 5: $74.99

-Screen repair/battery replacement for iPhone 6 Plus: $224.98

-Screen repair/battery replacement for iPhone 6: $194.98

-Screen repair/battery replacement for iPhone 5s, 5c, or 5: $174.98

Comcast said it has picked Charleston, S.C., as the spot for a fourth new customer support center, joining others that have been opened or are opening in Spokane, Wash.; Albuquerque, N.M. and Tucson, Ariz.

The new center will employ more than 550 people, Tom Karinshak, Comcast’s SVP, customer service, announced in this blog post, noting that hiring at the new location will get underway this summer.

Comcast hasn’t announced a firm opening date on the new center, but said the new $21.4 million, 80,000 square-foot "Center of Excellence" will be part of a 2,000-acre mixed-use development consisting of office, retail, hotel and residential properties. The facility will located at 3450 Ingleside Boulevard near U.S. Route 78 in North Charleston.

The announcement on the new center comes about a year after Comcast kicked off a major customer care initiative that will include the hiring of 5,500 customer service reps over a span of about three years.

As multichannel video programming distributors strive to boost subscriber loyalty in the face of increased competition, improving both customer care and network reliability is tantamount to their success.

Collecting and managing the Terabytes of data that providers receive from their customers and networks each day is a major part of delivering on those objectives.

Collection is easy — operators have been doing that for years. The trick is to analyze that information, then act and react to it in a timely fashion that improves subscribers’ perceptions of the customer experience.

To use big data effectively, distributors should look at their business decisions through a customer-experience lens, rather than just from an operations and technology standpoint, said Chris Menier, vice president of cable and media for Guavus, a data analytics company.

PARSING THE NOISE

Case in point: Operators receive tens of thousands of network alerts and alarms every day, Menier said. They can range from signal noise on a specific node to major blowouts. Big data analytics helps a network operator figure out how those alerts affect a customer’s experience, and helps parse how subscriber issues can be resolved with minimal impact to network operations or the bottom line.

Operators don’t need more information, Menier maintained. They need timely, contextualized information.

Breaking down the customer-care, operations and marketing silos and using all of that data simultaneously to solve problems and enhance service can help providers to improve the customer experience. That, in turn, leads to higher network promoter scores, lower churn and lower operational costs.

Sifting through operational data at a granular level doesn’t mean gathering more information, Menier said. It means using information that operators are already collecting more effectively.

For instance, rather than rebooting every modem overnight after an alarm is tripped, Guavus’s analytics can detect which modems are being affected and automatically send those customers a message explaining the problem and the solution. This approach both pinpoints where the operational problems reside and reduces calls into call centers and truck rolls, he said.

“We can turn detractors into promoters,” he said.

Over-the-top providers are delivering this kind of service now. Amazon Video, for instance, constantly monitors its quality of service and network operations. When something is amiss, Amazon subscribers recieve messages informing them of the problem and are issued credits commensurate with any interruption, said Kerry Sims, vice president, global solutions and smart infrastructure at Hitachi Consulting.

“This is the kind of proactive response consumers are increasingly demanding,” Sims said.

Because OTT providers are fully IP-configured, it’s easier to implement big data, Sims said. And it takes more than just network monitoring to meet customer-satistfaction goals.

INSIDE, OUTSIDE INFO

Information must be collated from both inside and outside a provider’s walled garden, including data on customer interaction via phone call, email or chat; social-media chatter; and even factors such as weather.

Effective use of big data “is like opening the aperture of a camera lens to better understand the whole scene,” Sims said.

AT&T analyzes more than 100 factors known to affect customer satisfaction, according to Nicole Rafferty, AT&T Entertainment Group’s vice president of customer experience and operations support . They include everything from call completion rates to terrain to posts on social media.

AT&T makes about 30 billion (yes, billion) overall service-assurance measurements across its wireless and wired networks in a typical hour, Rafferty said. It’s all aggregated and analyzed in real time to derive insights that help AT&T manage its network.

Customer-service agents use big-data analytics to parse the best way to remove those pain points, reducing time spent on the phone and improving the customer experience. For example, a virtual assistance speech-recognition tool makes it easier for AT&T subscribers to reach the right agent to solve their problems quickly and without a lot of number pushing or rerouting. The company worked with Interactions LLC to develop the tool, which understands when customers speak in complete, conversational sentences.

Since launching the product last year, AT&T has seen a 53% reduction in the number of callers who dial “0” to speak with an agent; most were able to resolve their issue without talking to an agent at all. Misdirected calls were down 36%, and the time customers spent with the automated system fell 28%. The tool should be in place company-wide by 2017, Rafferty said.

Comcast is using information from customer interactions to improve and personalize the call-center experience. For example, agents can access real-time, relevant context about a customer’s account to smooth customer interactions, said Comcast spokeswoman Jenni Moyer.

Agents can make recommendations based on prior interactions, the reasons the customer is calling at that moment, past service issues, etc.

“We can use this information to provide updates in our IVR system that gets customers to the right type of agent or information based on why they’re calling,” Moyer said. “We are also piloting technology to get the caller back to the same agent they talked to earlier.”

AT&T has created what it calls the Big Data Center for Excellence to gather and analyze the Terabytes of data it receives every day. The center works with AT&T’s business units to understand and eliminate pain points for customers, and makes the company more proactive.

“If you know you can be proactive, it takes the burden off the customer,” Rafferty said.

Predictive and proactive care may be the Holy Grail of improving the customer experience, but it’s really only one piece of the whole big-data picture, Matt Roberts, director of BDSI marketing at Amdocs, said.

“Some situations and parts of a company’s operations are better off when analyzed in real time,” he said. “But not everything has to be analyzed in real time.”

Using real-time big data analytics, a service provider can more quickly resolve network issues following customer calls and, perhaps more important, identify a customer’s issues before they he or she is even aware there is a problem. A service provider can either fi x the problem or reach out to let a subscriber know of a pending issue in advance and offer customers a salvo to ease the pain, Roberts said.

SETTING OTHER OBJECTIVES

Big data can also help operators also make strategic and long-term plans and that doesn’t necessarily require real-time analytics. For instance, by taking network data and overlaying it with customer data, an operator can determine when and where to upgrade plant first, Roberts said.

Big data can also be used to predict when components are likely to fail and be replaced before failures happen. It can pinpoint where new product launches will have the most impact, or determine which products are going to give a boost to customer satisfaction, Menier said.

Everything needs to be filtered through the customer lens, and big data analytics can help operators do that more efficiently and effectively.

“Big data has become a tangible entity,” Roberts said. “It’s gone from solving problems to helping make strategic long-term decisions.”  

Colorado-based billing and customer care company CSG International said it has appointed industry vet Marwan Fawaz to its board, and has promoted  CTO Ken Kennedy to EVP of product development.

Both execs assumed their new roles and responsibilities today (March 1).

Fawaz, a founder and principal of consulting firm Sarepta Advisors, is also on the board of Synacor and is an advisory board member of ADT, Liberty Global and Guavus, a big data firm.

Fawaz, recently named to the 50th anniversary class of Cable TV Pioneers, was in charge of Motorola Home before Google sold it to Arris in 2013, and is a former CTO of Charter Communications, Adelphia Communications (sold to Comcast and Time Warner in 2005), and MediaOne (now part of Comcast).

CSG said it developed its relationship with Fawaz during his time at Motorola and at Charter, which recently extended its agreement with CSG.

”Marwan Fawaz has first-hand knowledge of the inner workings and needs of CSG’s strategic markets, and he will bring an insider’s perspective that will help CSG align to address the challenges that these dynamic industries face,” Don Reed, chairman of CSG International’s board of directors, said in a statement.

CSG said Kennedy’s promotion followed his work to define the company’s technology roadmap and align the company’s technical vision with its business strategy.   Kennedy has managed CSG’s software development organization and been responsible for various aspects of developing and implementing technology initiatives related to CSG’s product offerings over the past 10 years. Kennedy joined CSG when the company acquired Telution, an OSS company, in 2006.

“Ken’s expertise and vision has led us to develop new innovations in our solutions portfolio that enable our clients to have more agile and dynamic operations. His promotion is an acknowledgment of the value that he brings to the future of our organization and to our clients worldwide,” added Bret Griess, CSG International’s president and chief executive officer. 

Colorado-based billing and customer care specialist CSG International has appointed Brian Shepherd to the post of executive vice president of CSG International and president of its Global Broadband, Cable and Satellite business.

Shepherd is late of several companies from the billing and customer care sector, including TeleTech, Amdocs, DST Innovis, and McKinsey & Company. During his time at Amdocs, Shepherd held key exec roles leading its broadband cable & satellite, North American Communications and Interactive divisions.

In his new role at CSG, which expanded its agreement with Comcast in 2014, Shepherd will focus on accelerating the growth and strategic direction of CSG’s global broadband, cable and direct broadcast satellite business.

“The pace of change and innovation in our industry has never been faster,” said Shepherd, in a statement. Our customers are leading the digital transformation fueled by broadband availability, innovative new services and the proliferation of devices. CSG will continue to invest in and support the future success of our valued customers.”

“Globally, the video and entertainment industry is transforming its business to better serve the mobile, digital consumer,” added Bret Griess, president and CEO of CSG International. “Now, more than ever, operators need new strategies and solutions that will allow them to expand relationships with existing and new consumers, and empower consumers to take their video content with them wherever they go, across all devices.  The combination of a proven and trusted industry leader like Brian and CSG’s unrivalled domain expertise in the cable and satellite markets will enable us to continue to deliver exceptional business outcomes to cable operators around the world.”

Two Colorado–based companies -- NCTI (formerly Jones/NCTI) and opXL LLC -- have come together to launch nine courses for frontline cable and broadband industry techs.

The courses, a three-part series focused on the HFC Outside Plant, and a six-part Safety Series, are being offered online and address two of the top training requests from cable operators in educating frontline teams, they said.

The online courses, which feature video clips and animation to illustrate concepts, are optimized for iPads and Android tablets, they added. NCTI will market and sell the opXL-developed courses and offer them at www.ncti.com

The HFC Outside Plant Technician Basics Series provides an overview of cable math, AC power and RF theory. The Safety Series delivers safety refreshers in the following areas: Bucket Truck Safety; Ladder Safety; Electrical Safety-Outside Plant; Electrical Safety-Customer Premises; Slips, Trips and Falls; and Driving Safety

"Our customers told us they want basic training for HFC Outside Plant Technicians and need safety refresher courses to keep technician teams safe, and support corporate risk management goals,” said Stacey Slaughter, NCTI’s CEO, who acquired Jones/NCTI late last year. “We are pleased to collaborate with opXL to offer these important and relevant new courses in a learner-friendly format. Our superior delivery system and this high quality content creates a win-win for operators."

"NCTI provides opXL with a fantastic avenue to deliver our interactive HFC Technician and Safety courseware to the service provider market,” added Tom Gorman, president of opXL. “The HFC Tech Series gives advanced techs the knowledge and skills they need to be more effective in their job - which is invaluable as technology changes. The skill level of service techs must evolve as well.  And safety - among both field employees and contracted technicians - is of critical, and often overlooked, importance. In addition to the personal health benefits, the amount of savings an operator can realize by reducing reportable accidents is significant."

"opXL Learning Systems' HFC Tech Series and Safety Series programs are a great addition to NCTI's robust curriculum,” opXL principal Neil Sullivan said. “The HFC Tech Series is ground-breaking, online, interactive content that can be delivered via any web format and is available 24/7. Our Safety courses have been developed with employee welfare in mind. One of our MSO clients has reported a reduction in accidents of 50% since they started using the programs."

Stacey Slaughter, the CEO and CFO of Jones/NTCI, has finalized a deal to acquire the cable and broadband technology and services training company from Jones International, and plans to keep the firm based in the Denver area.

Slaughter (pictured) said she joined the bidding for the company when the Jones International board decided to seek a buyer for Jones/NCTI, a process that started following the passing of cable pioneer Glenn Jones in July. Jones International Academy closed its acquisition of NCTI,then a rival cable education and training firm, in January 2006.

Financial terms of the acquisition of Jones/NCTI were not disclosed, but Slaughter, who is coming up on her 20th year with Jones International, said she is now the sole owner of Jones/NCTI and financed the deal on her own.

Slaughter said she tossed her hat in the ring when the sales process for Jones/NCTI got underway in the late summer.  

“I believe strongly in what we do,” she said. “I believe in this team and believe in the services we provide, the products that we develop and the partners that we have in the MSO industry. I have a strong commitment to see that [business] continue to grow.”

Slaughter said all 30 Jones/NCTI employees (in true Jones form, she refers to them as “associates”) will stay with the company, which will be rebranded as “NCTI" in the coming months. 

Plans are also underway to move the company out of its current location, at the Jones headquarters building in Centennial, Colo., and set up new base of operations in nearby Littleton. Negotiations for the new space are ongoing, but Slaughter hopes to execute the move by February 2016.

“I wanted to make sure this team continued on their trajectory,” she said of her decision to buy the company, noting that developing training and courses for DOCSIS 3.1, fiber networks, and WiFi installation and troubleshooting will continue to be a near-term focus. NCTI, she added, will also focus on the “evolving the customer experience” as support increasingly links call centers with field technicians.

“I feel great about our prospects in 2016,” she said, adding that plans are underway to relaunch NCTI’s learning platform in the first quarter of next year.

Jones/NCTI, which has trained nearly 500,000 frontline employees since its founding, also offers a fully-accredited college certificate and degree program through a partnership with Arapahoe Community College. 

Slaughter joined Jones International in January 1996 as a staff accountant and worked her way up from there. She was named CFO of Jones/NCTI in 2012, appointed acting CEO in late 2013, and named permanent CEO in 2014, when Glenn Jones was appointed executive chairman of the Jones/NCTI  board.  She received her undergraduate degree in accounting from the University of Washington in Seattle, and a  Masters’ degree from the University of Colorado in 2001. She is a Certified Public Accountant and a member of the Colorado Society of CPAs.

CSG Systems said CEO Peter Kalan has announced plans to retire on Jan. 1, 2016, and that the billing and customer care company has tapped Bret Griess, CSG’s current president and COO, to succeed him.

Griess, 47, will also be appointed to the CSG board effective January 1. He’s been with CSG for more than 19 years, and currently oversees the company’s global sales, operations and delivery, client relationships, product development and management.

Kalan (pictured), 56, has served as CSG CEO and president since December 2007. Kalan joined CSG in January 1997.

CSG’s customers include AT&T, Comcast, Dish Network, Orange, Reliance, SingTel Optus, Telecom New Zealand, Telefonica, Time Warner Cable, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Vodafone, among others.  Of recent note, Colorado-based CSG struck an extended deal with Charter Communications that covers residential billing, customer care services and its new digitally-focused Ascendon platform, through December 2019.

“On behalf of the CSG Board of Directors, I am extremely grateful to Peter for his outstanding leadership,” said Don Reed, chairman of CSG’s board, in a statement. “Under Peter’s leadership, CSG has become the leading business support solutions provider in the North American cable and satellite markets, expanded our presence internationally, invested in next generation solutions aimed at the changing video landscape, and groomed the next generation of CSG leaders to build upon this legacy. Bret’s appointment as chief executive officer by the board is the result of a robust succession planning process and the confidence that we have in this management team to continue to drive long-term shareholder value as has been done under Peter’s leadership.”

“I am honored to have worked with such a committed and dedicated group of employees,” Kalan added. “Over the years, I’m very proud of the work that we have done to enable our clients to compete in an extremely challenging and dynamic environment. This could not have been accomplished without an active and engaged board of directors and a highly qualified and talented executive team. Bret and his teams have played an integral role towards transforming our company into a trusted partner to the world’s leading communications providers. I am leaving the company in good hands with Bret and this broad and deep bench of experienced leaders within the company.”

“I am grateful to have the opportunity to lead CSG at this exciting moment in our history,” said Griess. “I look forward to working with the board, our customers, our leadership team and our highly talented employees as we continue to enhance our competitive position in the markets we serve, execute on our strategic plan and continue to deliver strong results benefitting our shareholders, customers, employees and communities in which we operate.”

As part of a broader effort to boost customer service and customer care, Time Warner Cable has rolled out a new online tool that provides instant feedback questions customer pose about their service.

Via the “Ask TWC Virtual Assistant,” customers can use a mobile device or PC to type a question in their own words or choose from a list of common questions and get immediate assistance.

In addition to providing on-the-spot assistance, the new feature, which is included in the My TWC mobile app and via areas of the twc.com web site, also enables TWC to learn about the type and volume of customer inquiries and to work out new resolutions.

“We’ve transformed our online Ask TWC feature into a virtual assistant by enabling customers to now simply type in any service question they have rather than just using search terms,” said John Keib, Time Warner Cable’s EVP and COO, residential services, in a statement. “This tool is all about giving the customer control over their service experience by putting it on their schedule and eliminating potential phone wait times and transfers.”

TWC recently launched a “TechTracker” mobile app company-wide.

It’s official. America’s cable and wireless providers are the worst when it comes to customer service, according to the recently published Customer Service Hall of Shame list. Behemoth media company Comcast ranks No. 1 at providing the most “abysmal” customer service among those surveyed, while AT&T, now officially merged with DirecTV, comes in at No. 5. In fact, cable, satellite and wireless service providers make up six of the 10 spots on this year’s list.

While most media companies claim to be committed to providing good customer service, and many invest millions in marketing catchphrases and taglines to reinforce that claim, few have learned that to actually provide good customer service, it’s not what you say but rather what you do that matters most. 

We learned this valuable lesson over the past three decades as one of India's largest private-sector enterprises, with our core areas of business in consumer electronics and home appliances. We understand that customers not only need but also depend on both electronics and appliances to manage their daily lives and that reliability of both product and service is critical in building, maintaining and retaining customer satisfaction and loyalty.  That’s why, when Videocon launched its Videocon d2h direct-to-home service in July 2009 — entering a marketplace that already had five established service providers — our goal was to differentiate ourselves by providing 100% customer satisfaction.

Like their U.S. counterparts, our competitors offered confusing subscription packages coupled with unsatisfactory technology, long wait times for technical solutions and frequent disruptions of service — the perfect recipe for unhappy customers willing to move to another provider at the first opportunity. And since Indian regulations mandate nonexclusive content, we realized that the only way we could distinguish ourselves from our competition was by innovating in the areas where their customers were dissatisfied. 

We promised same-day installation, superior compression technology that essentially eliminated buffering issues, a simple pre-paid subscription model and a plethora of local, regional and specialty channels all supported by professional, courteous and timely resolution of customer complaints. 

By shifting 8% to 10% of our operating budget to retaining customers rather than constantly acquiring new ones, we created some 300 local Direct Service Centers (DSCs),extensively training and employing more than 7,000 customer service and technical support representatives. Staff are assigned to DSCs based on customer density, ensuring immediate availability, and are empowered to resolve any customer service issue quickly and to the subscriber’s full satisfaction. And employee promotions and incentive programs are based on customer ratings of an individual’s performance. This unique but common-sense approach to doing business created a dramatic shift in the attitude and behavior of both consumers and employees.

Today, Videocon d2h is ranked as India’s best and fastest-growing DTH service provider. More encouraging is the fact that 90 to 100 million Indian homes will make the switch to digital platforms in the year ahead. And while the number of channels (525), packaging, pricing, programming and compression technology offered by Videocon d2h certainly play into our extraordinarily high customer satisfaction, we believe the bulk of the credit goes to our 7,000 customer-service technicians who will undoubtedly provide the advantage in attracting those 100 million new subscribers to Videocon d2h.

We believe this example serves as a warning to America’s media companies, especially those that are “too big to fail.”  The more cumbersome their operations become, the more room there will be for upstarts willing to always put the customer, rather than the bottom line, first.  Once again, our business strategy is based on one simple concept — the consumer always wins.

Saurabh Dhoot is executive chairman of Indian direct-to-home provider Videocon d2h.

Comcast unveiled a new component in its ongoing effort to vastly improve customer care, a tool that lets customers show service reps exactly what their service problem is.

Called “Co-Pilot,” the tool is part of its X1 platform and is currently being trialed in about 1 million homes. In a nutshell, Co-Pilot allows a customer care rep or technician take control of a user’s screen – after receiving a verification code – and walks them through the process of solving the problem.

“Customers often call us with questions like, ‘how can I set up a DVR recording?’ With Co-Pilot, our tech support can see a customer’s screen and—after receiving an on-screen verification code from the customer—‘take the controls,’ walking them through the various features that come with their service,” said Comcast executive vice president, customer experience Charlie Herrin in a blog posting.

Comcast said that so far, most customer are using Co-Pilot to familiarize themselves with the X1 platform’s features and feedback has been good. The company expects to make Co-Pilot available to all X1 customers later this year.

It is no secret that consumers believe that cable operators need to improve in the customer-experience department. The latest writing on the wall came earlier this month, when the American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) survey saw cable ranked toward the bottom of the list.

An overall industry focus on customer experience couldn’t come at a better time. As media and telecom companies race to deliver premium offerings, customer experience will emerge as a key differentiator. New competitors, like Netflix, are already well-positioned as consumer-friendly, earning the reputation, in part, by offering a frictionless customer experience. This is perhaps an easier stance to take when delivering a service that costs customers around $10, and doesn’t require a fleet of installers to make house calls, maintenance of a broad range of networks, oversight of thousands of phone-based, online and social media-focused customer service reps and countless other moving pieces.

The bar has been set high, and operators know it. At INTX last month, Comcast announced a multiyear plan to transform the customer experience across the company. This will happen via increased investments in training and technology, simplified processes, and enhanced communications with customers.

Still, for the overall industry the challenges are numerous, there are several customer experience improvement areas that all operators can start focusing on today to bring perception in line with the innovation being pushed into the market. Many of these strategies are also applicable for programmers, as more continue to enter the direct-to-consumer market.

EMPOWER, CONNECT WITH CUSTOMERS

When Domino’s Pizza analyzed inbound phone calls, it discovered that employees were spending an inordinate amount of time responding to post-sale inquiries about when an order would arrive. The company had previously developed an internal system that tracked this information, but customers had to call, wait on hold, and spend time on the phone to have it relayed to them. Domino’s ultimately cut down on calls and improved the overall experience by providing customers with near real-time access to its tracking system via an intuitive app and website.

Cable has the same opportunity to bring subscribers out of the dark. Operators always know where their trucks are. They know the moment that there’s an outage and generally how long it will take to fix. This info should be easily accessible by subscribers via apps, the Web, or built directly into products. No calling after the fact, trying to find account info, waiting for a rep, or talking with several people about the issue.

Operators should also explore leveraging subscribers as frontline tech support agents. Many subscribers, especially millennials, turn to Google and Web forums before placing a phone call for tech support questions. Incentivizing “power users” to participate in these forums, serve as company ambassadors, and help answer simple questions online via gamification, rewards, and more can help further reduce unnecessary calls.

INCORPORATE PERSONALIZATION, DIFFERENTIATION

Customer preferences are not one-size-fits-all, and cookie-cutter processes can limit the ability to meet customer expectations. Frequent travel programs have long provided loyalty incentives to differentiate experiences for valued customers, but Starwood Hotels recognized the value of providing truly personalized experiences for top tier customers, who account for a large portion of revenue, by providing dedicated representatives to handle all aspects of their travel needs. The company’s high-touch Ambassador program has helped drive both customer acquisition and retention.

Operators tend to have relatively rigid processes for how subscribers are treated and serviced. Depending on expectations, this can frustrate consumers who would rather just receive equipment in the mail and self-install; or those who want premium, white-glove treatment from an experienced and familiar tech that can walk them through every feature of the service; or households where a language other than English is spoken. Operators should focus on understanding customer preferences and tailoring experiences accordingly.

And while every customer should get a great experience, it’s important that customers in different parts of the life cycle get the right treatment. In other words, understanding the total picture of a customer across product mix and usage, lifetime value, tenure, contact history, propensity to churn and more. This can help create tailored and differentiated experiences that impress and delight customers.

For example, subscribers that had a recent increase in likelihood to churn, should always be directed to a top-performing account rep as quickly as possible. If the inquiry demands it, this representative should also have specialized experience to solve an issue quickly. When relatively new customers go online or call, after their issue is addressed, they should proactively be directed to online tutorials for engaging products they may have not used much, such as VOD and TV everywhere.

DELIVER DATA-DRIVEN PROACTIVE RESPONSES

So much data exists around products and services that subscribers are using everyday, issues they might be having, reasons why they’re calling, and much more. Operators must put this data to work to identify patterns that lead to poor experiences or churn — or, on the flip side, to identify what trends and behaviors generate the best experiences.

Companies are utilizing data to proactively identify problems and address issues before they create negative experiences. Amazon’s Instant Video service monitors purchase patterns and real-time product performance to recognize when customers have video streaming issues, and rapidly issues a refund, apology notification, and recommendations on how to resolve the issue before the customer even contacts them to complain. This can effectively turn a negative experience into a positive one.

If a customer has had multiple service outages, operators should be proactive in communicating with the customer about the cause and what’s being done to mitigate future issues. This communication should happen via the customer’s preferred method for receiving messages.

When data trends reveal that a certain subset of subscribers are at risk of churning based on historical events, that is the time to go over the top to make that customer feel special, and reinforce that the experience is not typical and will improve.

EMPOWER EMPLOYEES TO GO THE EXTRA MILE 

Customer-service reps can be polite, knowledgeable, good listeners, and have the best training and intentions. But if they don’t have the right tools to create the best experiences for customers, they are hamstrung.

Online shoe retailer Zappos is famous for its focus on creating positive customer experiences. To support that focus, Zappos provides its front-line call center reps with a suite of simple tools and lightly-structured policies for solving customer problems. When a customer calls, reps are provided with complete access to support and shopping histories, have visibility into real-time inventory levels for all products, are measured on problem resolution instead of handle time, and empowered with the ability to create reasonable “wow” moments to help customers solve problems.

Operators should look across the entire customer experience to understand pain points that have been created by inefficient processes or employee tool limitations. For instance, when an installer comes to a subscriber’s house, the subscriber shouldn’t have to stare as the installer waits on hold to activate a new set top box. When services are disrupted, reps should have approval to offer courtesy discounts that don’t require putting the customer on hold to check with a supervisor. If an existing customer visits a local service center, the rep should have easy access to that customer’s purchase history, recent service call and online self-service experiences, current product mix, and if applicable, why they’re there, and what they need.

IMPROVEMENTS MUST PERMEATE THE ENTIRE ORGANIZATION

Enhancements are on the horizon that will bring cable’s customer experience perception on par with the unprecedented technological innovation that it is bringing to the industry right now.

To ensure success, initiatives must be measurable with the right metrics and must connect the loop between identifying the root cause of a negative customer experience, ensuring that there is accountability for resolving and eliminating the core issue, and communicating the resolution to the customer and across the organization. Everyone in the organization should have a sense of ownership over creating great experiences, from call center reps, field techs, network engineers, software developers and product managers to marketing and sales teams, and billing and internal systems engineers. They all contribute to the overall customer experience.

Customer experience can’t be a set it and forget it investment. From here on out, it will need to be a constant, unrelenting focus across the cable industry.

Justin Forer is a principal consultant at IBB Consulting, leading customer experience initiatives for cable operators and programmers. He can be reached at mailto:justinf@ibbconsulting.com.

More than 1,100 people have applied for 750 jobs at Comcast’s newest customer care center in Spokane, Wash., one of three the company said it would create as part of its initiative to add 5,500 new care workers in the next three years.

The Spokane center is expected to be opened in the summer of 2016, and is one of three new state-of-the-art care centers the company is building – the other two are in Tucson, Ariz., and Albuquerque, N.M. Comcast said in a blog posting by senior vice president of customer service Tom Karinshak Wednesday that it will be opening an interim facility – more than 50,000 square-feet located in Spokane Valley – so it can start hiring and providing customer assistance immediately. Since announcing the plan in May, Comcast has announced more than 2,250 new jobs associated with the initiative.

Comcast held a job fair in Spokane Tuesday to kick off the hiring process, with about 200 people in attendance. Representatives from various local organizations also attended, including local veterans groups in support of Comcast’s pledge to hire 10,000 reservists, veterans and their spouses or domestic partners by the end of 2017.

In the blog posting, Karinshak said that Comcast has received 2,200 applications for the Albuquerque center and more than 1,200 in Tucson and has already started to hire some people.

“The new hires in all three of these centers will help us bring customers across the country the support they need – it’s an important step toward our goal of making call wait times shorter and helping customers get their service or billing issues resolved faster,” Karinshak said in the blog.

Comcast said it plans to hold additional hiring activities and opening celebrations for the Spokane center later in the summer. Interested applicants can apply here.

Comcast has hooked up with Nextdoor on an Xfinity Neighborhood Program that provides cable subs in Seattle access to a local “concierge” who’s available to answer questions about the MSO’s products, communicate service outages and provide offers and passes to special events.

According to GeekWire, Nextdoor, a private social networking platform tailored for individual neighborhoods, recently alerted community leaders in Seattle about the pilot program.

Founded in 2010, Nextdoor’s free platform enables individual neighborhoods to create private Websites to exchange contact info, offer advice and recommendations, and to organize virtual neighborhood watch groups. Comcast Ventures was one of a handful of companies that participated in a $60 million round of funding in Nexdoor announced last fall.

According to an FAQ about the pilot underway in Seattle, Comcast isn’t paying Nextdoor. “While XFINITY is offering this new program through Nextdoor, the two companies remain completely separate, and XFINITY will have no access to information about Nextdoor members," it reads. 

The FAQ also notes that Nextdoor can’t assist with Comcast service support or technical issues.

However, Shelli, the first “Xfinity ambassador” for the Seattle trial, notes in this Web post that she’ll be providing help with questions about Comcast services. Describing her role as “kind of like a neighborhood concierge,” she’s “not a salesperson, just your conveniently located link to a larger team that’s dedicated to providing customer service for you.”

Comcast is testing out the neighborhood concierge idea as the operator expands on efforts to improve its customer service and care. Of recent note, Comcast announced it would hire 5,500 customer service reps over the next three years as it showed off a prototype Studio Xfinity store in Chicago during the INTX show.

Comcast said it will significantly boost its social media customer care team, tripling the number of employees at the unit and adding more resources and support to help them to better serve customer needs.

The cable operator announced the plans on a blog posting by senior vice president of customer service Tom Karinshak. In the posting, Karinshak said that the growing use of social media like Facebook and Twitter spurred the decision to beef up the unit.

“When we first launched our social care team in 2007, the idea of engaging with customers on social media was brand new,” Karinshak said in the blog posting. “Today the world looks completely different.”

Comcast plans to increase the size of its social media customer care team from its current 20 employees to 60, which it says will enable the cable company to support customers across more platforms and get to them faster. Comcast hopes to reach that staffing goal by late spring or early summer and will continue to support social media like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus, expanding to other platforms as the unit expands.

“A larger team also means that we'll be able to increase bicoastal and bilingual coverage to make sure we are available 24/7 to customers who speak either English or Spanish,” Karinshak said in the blog post.

Cable operators have long seen social media and online functions as a way to address customer care issues quickly. Most cable operators allow customers to ask questions and set up appointments online and via other methods.

According to Comcast, its social media care team has access to all the same tools as its call center agents – they have a direct line into tech teams so they can schedule appointments. The cable company also will add analysts to monitor activity on social media, who can for example identify when a lot of customers appear to be having the same issue and rectifying it on a broader scale. Comcast also has set a goal that its team will get to customers within 30 minutes of their reaching out to the company via social media. No small task when you consider Comcast has about 22 million customers across the country.   

“We are going to continue to grow social care as much as it takes to make it a real, vibrant way for customers to get their questions answered and issues resolved,” Karinshak said in the blog post.   We’re just beginning the hiring process now and it’s going to take some time to get up and running, but we are really excited about the possibilities.”