What can you learn from your customers or users as they engage with your video service offerings? A huge amount. It is one of those moments of truth’ that could dramatically change your business for the better if you know how to best respond. CEO Jan Carlzon of Scandinavian airline SAS popularized the ‘Moments of Truth’ idea with his seminal book of the same name. Here's the basic idea: anytime a customer comes into contact with any aspect of your business, however remote, it is an opportunity to form an impression. We couldn’t agree more and think that OTT and TVE services also face these “moments of truth,” — particularly as it relates to user monetization.
Here are five “moments of truth” to eliminate friction and frustration for better user monetization:
Eliminate Friction at the Point of Registration to Enable Seamless Sign-In
Monetizing across the user lifecycle requires this. Sounds brilliant, right? But all too often, users hit snafus trying to register or sign in to watch content, and some never come back and cancel service. To avoid this situation, video services need to support authentication across multiple paths adding to the complexity of the task. At Evergent, we believe that your user lifecycle management platform should harmonize identity management, improving the user experience for your subscribers that access the service across more than one platform. A unified and streamlined sign-on experience is the answer.
Re-mix the TV bundle — Focus on Product, Packaging, Price, Promotion, and Platform
In an era when the TV bundle itself is being fundamentally remixed, these decisions are critical. Flexible re-aggregation of content, including an “a-la-carte” flexibility, occurs as providers experiment with different ways of establishing value in the consumer's mind. Providers are segmenting consumers and launching promotions, and coming up with powerful new ways to drive new users to a new OTT video service — streaming devices such as Roku, Apple TV, FireTV, or Chromecast are examples of making it easier for customers to get to the content they want on the device they want. OTT service providers are also looking not just to curate and program the content but also how to merchandise and promote it. Once they capture a consumer, they look for ways to combat churn and leverage data-driven promotions. Data analytics can help providers generate new promotional opportunities by the segment that can directly mitigate churn.
Start Viewing Entitlement Management as a Strategic Asset
Often overlooked, video service providers should consider that entitlement functions are vital to executing promotions. Many creative ways to drive upgrades or increase per-user revenue growth will require the support of an entitlement module that can execute against highly complex rules. You’ll have to consider innovations like selling upgrades in real-time and leveraging content licensing, royalties, and bandwidth to translate into economic value. Entitlements might support device access, simultaneous streams, DVR storage, hourly access (PPV), daily access, or weekend access. These can all be configured via the dashboard by Evergent.
Focus on the Heart of User Monetization — Billing and Payments
Massive disruption is taking place in the payments ecosystem. You’ve got to play nice with the App stores, offer direct carrier billing and hybrid TVE upsell and always focus on data security, privacy, and protection. You’ve got to be aware of the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. These regulations ratchet up the requirements on video service providers competing in Europe. GDPR is pretty serious stuff. Two features have to go live by May 2018. One is that end-users need to be notified even if a suspected breach has occurred. The other is that OTT services need to be able to allow the consumer to update or delete their data directly.
Create a Customer Care Portal to Tackle Churn and Upsell
Investing in your customer care offering is a good investment in your future. Don't let your users walk away frustrated with glitches, crashes, and other error messages. Trained personnel working on internal service portals may be your last chance to retain subscribers — and if executed correctly, they can serve as “brand ambassadors” to help upsell subscribers to premium packages and make dynamic offers to save voluntary churn candidates.
Related media
