Showtime for Media & Entertainment: Is your CX supporting consumption or cord-cutting?

3 tips to think through a Media and Entertainment customer experience strategy.

During the pandemic, the Media and Entertainment industry has seen massive growth in some segments and “cord-cutting” in others. The magnitude of the content flowing to meet personal preferences across a variety of viewing options has put the “meet the customer where they are” customer experience (CX) mantra to the test. 

Those who were nimble have seen COVID-19 as a boon for business, while those who couldn’t keep up lost opportunity. Key to success in retaining and growing the subscriber and viewer relationship was—and still is—providing a customer experience as dynamic as the content you are creating and distributing.

Some entertainment segments experienced massive growth.

At home, entertainment has changed forever. The pandemic accelerated and expanded how we experience content. How, what, and where content was consumed changed. Consumers now subscribe to an average of five paid streaming services (such as Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus…) up from three before the pandemic, according to Deloitte’s Digital media trends survey of 1,100 United States consumers. 

YouTube Gaming had its biggest year ever in 2020 with 100B watch time hours. (I think my family alone contributed to 50% of that if big dents in the couch cushion are a measurement.) 

Musicians sought new venues to reach their fans. American rapper, singer, songwriter, and record producer Travis Scott performed within Epic Games’s wildly popular platform Fortnite, attracting 12.3M people. In addition to attending this concert, my Generation “Z’s” dropped $20 for a Travis Scott “skin.” 

Reality shows and weird-crime stories were our comfort food. Who will admit they watched at least one episode of Netflix’s “Tiger King?” Well, 64M households according to Variety.

While “cord-cutting” happened in others.

Meanwhile, cable TV subscriptions are expected to go into a virtual free fall this year according to the second Future of TV Report by The Trade Desk (Nasdaq: TTD). By 2022, almost 25% of U.S. households will cancel their cable subscriptions. “A whopping 27 percent of current cable subscribers said they intend to ditch cable in 2021, compared to 15 percent of cable TV subscribers who reported they cut the cord in 2020,” according to The Future of TV Report.  Finally, the “Big Four” broadcast networks fell at least 10% in total viewers from 2019 to 2020.

Will binging continue?

People may not continue to binge content at the rate they did in the middle of the pandemic. In fact, as things free up, there is likely going to be a shift. Maybe there will be more virtual concerts. Maybe less. Perhaps there will be a downshift from five back to three paid streaming services. Time will tell. Regardless, it’s important to be nimble and responsive to ensure that your customer is consuming and not cord-cutting.  

Here are three general tips when thinking through a Media and Entertainment customer experience strategy. 

1. Meet them where they are.

Include social messaging in your digital engagement experience. Providing integrated customer support through SMS, live chat, email, and social messaging is critical as you are meeting them where they “are.” 

Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2015) are more likely to post favorable impressions on social media than older generations. Serve them well in the channel they connect to and they’ll help your brand expand. 

2. Get to know them. 

Apply insights from data to personalize the customer journey. Discovering patterns in the vast amounts of customer interaction data and applying actionable customer intelligence is critical in forging that subscriber relationship. 

Customers reach out to you via different channels. They react differently to various offers and project their feelings uniquely. Having insights into these behaviors along the journey will inform incentives, routing, and proactive strategy.  

3. Reach out—don’t just be reactive.

It is critical you keep pace with the speed in which content and distribution is accelerating. Embrace proactive outbound communication to keep viewers and subscribers positively engaged with your brand. 

Let’s consider a subscriber who consumes a specific genre of content. Send a proactive email to them as more releases of the same genre of content become available. This communication can inform viewers that you understand who they are, and what they might like to watch next. You might want to check out our 5 steps to AI success: Leading contact centers to a Netflix-like customer experience ebook.

 

Media and Entertainment is a dynamic and highly competitive environment. Make sure you focus your customer experience engagement so that your subscribers are consuming, not cord-cutting. 

Can’t wait to see “what’s next” (figuratively and literally). While I did my share of binging over the last year, I’m still blaming the dents in the couch on my Generation “Z’s.”