Paywizard and Genius Digital join forces to deliver pay TV customer insights

Paywizard and Genius Digital join forces to deliver pay-TV customer insights that drive loyalty and growth

LONDON — Paywizard, the pay-TV subscription, billing and customer relationship management (CRM) specialist, and Genius Digital, the expert in audience analytics for TV, announced today a new strategic partnership to provide operators with a holistic view of their subscribers that will boost customer engagement.

The new partnership combines Genius Digital’s ability to access vast usage data and provide actionable insights into consumer viewing habits across millions of devices, with Paywizard’s technology and expertise on subscriber decision-making and transactional behaviour. The result is a powerful platform that pay-TV operators can use to build a true 360-degree subscriber view and a clear picture of the full customer lifecycle – from acquisition to possible churn – that will drive both overall strategy and individual engagement.

“Each time a customer interacts with a TV service, there is a series of critical decision points at which timely engagement from the operator has a massive impact on how that subscriber relationship will continue,” notes Bhavesh Vaghela, CMO of Paywizard. “Responding effectively at each of these key ‘Decision Moments’ is vital in order to ensure subscribers stay loyal and minimise churn. Having deeper data makes this task easier to achieve.”

Tom Weiss, CEO of Genius Digital, says: “Paywizard’s deep expertise around how subscribers make purchasing decisions at each stage of their customer journey makes them a perfect partner for us. Combining this knowledge of the customer lifecycle with the audience data we collect across millions of devices at Genius Digital, means we can leverage our respective strengths to offer operators a really powerful platform that provides a more in-depth view of their customers than ever before.”

For many TV operators – whether traditional linear TV, video on demand or hybrid service providers – there is an imperative to use viewing data effectively to generate analysis that bolsters their overall marketing strategy and effectiveness. However, often when viewing, transactional and other subscriber data sets are held in silos, operators struggle to integrate the various strands of information into existing processes and produce accurate insights that enable them to build on subscriber relationships.

“Armed with this combined knowledge in a single customer view, TV service providers are better positioned to retain subscribers by gaining an understanding of what motivates them to churn, so they can act on the resulting insights,” says Weiss. “What’s more, having insight on each subscriber and their viewing habits means that upsell offers can be delivered in a more targeted way to not only prevent churn, but increase revenues.”

Weiss continues: “What’s really exciting about this partnership is that operators can start benefiting from this capability immediately, without the need for huge infrastructure changes or complex changes to existing business processes.”

Vaghela adds: “Our goal is to get operators to a position whereby they are responding to subscribers precisely when subscribers need them, and taking an approach which is tailored to the particular individual. Working with Genius Digital means we can provide operators with even greater insight into how their subscribers are using a service, whether it’s the type of content they are watching, the device they are watching it on, or even when they are watching it. This adds that vital extra layer of data-driven insight into subscriber activity, which can help operators target customers more effectively with personalised marketing.”

Recent global research commissioned by Paywizard revealed that failure to understand a customer – and to provide a consistently positive customer experience as a result – can have a fatal impact on a subscriber relationship. A quarter of the 6,200-plus consumers surveyed had cancelled a digital pay-TV service as a result of poor customer experience, while close to half had retained a subscription they considered terminating because of positive factors such as attention to customer needs, understanding of preferences, spot-on content recommendations, response to changes in usage and package flexibility.

Visitors to the Paywizard Booth (#SU9204CM) at NAB Show 2017 (Las Vegas, 24th-27th April) will be able to experience on-booth demos from Genius Digital and Paywizard, highlighting the benefits of the new partnership.