Delivering the Analytics Platform of a New OTT Service

A large multinational corporation facing project management and operational challenges in its digital media division turned to members of Pivotal Allies to help them with the launch of a new OTT (over-the-top) video service. The customer aims to compete with established players in the industry by providing a superior user experience and leveraging data-driven insights to inform their business strategies.

The customer faced several challenges common to new OTT services:

• Understanding viewer preferences and behavior to curate content effectively.
• Optimizing marketing campaigns to attract and retain subscribers.
• Enhancing the user experience across different devices and platforms.
• Monitoring and managing content performance to maximize ROI.
• Ensuring operational efficiency across various departments.

Getting Started

We implemented a comprehensive insights and analytics platform designed to serve all departments. The platform provided near real-time data and actionable insights tailored to the needs of each department. The implementation process was carried out in several phases:

Discovery and Planning:

• Conducted workshops with key stakeholders from all departments to understand their specific data needs and pain points.
• Defined the scope and objectives of the analytics platform.
• Created a detailed implementation roadmap with clear milestones and timelines.

Platform Development:

• Implemented any necessary instrumentation to collect data, aligned with data source systems to ensure data requirements are satisfied.
• Built a scalable data infrastructure to collect and process data from various sources, including user interactions, content metadata, and third-party integrations.
• Developed custom dashboards and reports for each department to ensure they had access to relevant insights.

Integration and Testing:

• Integrated the analytics platform to ensure seamless data flow across all touchpoints.
• Conducted extensive testing to validate data accuracy and platform performance.

Training and Adoption:

• Provided training sessions and documentation to help employees across all departments become proficient in using the new analytics tools.
• Gathered feedback and made iterative improvements to enhance user experience and functionality.

Success Enablement Across the Organization

The insights and analytics platform centralized data from across the organization into a cohesive data product. This platform delivered significant benefits to various departments, some notable examples include:

Content:

• Identified viewer preferences and trends, enabling the content team to curate and produce content that resonates with the audience.
• Improved content acquisition strategies by analyzing performance data of similar content across the industry.

Marketing:

• Enhanced targeting and personalization of marketing campaigns, resulting in higher engagement rates and increased subscriber acquisition.
• Optimized ad spend by identifying the most effective channels and strategies through A/B testing and performance analysis.

Product Development:

• Analyzed user behavior to identify pain points and opportunities for improving the user interface and overall experience.
• Implemented data-driven features and enhancements that increased user satisfaction and retention.

Operations:

• Streamlined content delivery and resource allocation by monitoring usage patterns and peak times.
• Reduced operational costs by identifying inefficiencies and optimizing workflows.

Customer Support:

• Provided the support team with insights into common issues and user feedback, enabling faster and more effective resolution of customer inquiries.
• Enhanced proactive support measures by predicting potential problems based on data trends.

Fraud Prevention:

• Identified patterns related to fraudulent accounts & free trial abuse in order to put in safeguards for fraud prevention.

Finance:

• Provided data and platform to develop financial forecasting models
• Enabled preliminary financial reports on a daily basis to quickly track against monthly forecasts

Customer 360 Enables Cross Department Collaboration to Enhance the Customer Experience

This unified data analytics platform provided a comprehensive Customer 360 view, integrating data from various touchpoints including user profiles, viewing history, customer support interactions, and marketing engagements. This unified view provided a holistic understanding of each customer’s preferences, behavior, and feedback.

Furthermore, this 360 view unlocked collaboration between departments in new ways that achieve shared business objectives, creating a more cohesive and effective organization that ultimately benefited the customer experience

Examples of successful collaboration include:

Content and Marketing

• Analytics platform hosted an analytical model of the historical, current, and future content catalog, both VOD & Live.
• Marketing team was provided the upcoming content release calendar in order to better plan marketing initiatives.

Content and Customer Support

• The Customer Support team was provided the same upcoming content release calendar in order to properly staff the support channels during high volume content events.

Product and Customer Support

• The Customer Support team was provided with a dashboard with individual customer usage and experience insights. For example, agents could see if a customer recently experienced any issues such as video start failures or excessive buffering. Having the detailed error messages enabled technical support agents to better troubleshoot and resolve technical issues.
• He Customer Support team also had a platform health dashboard. Having insight into any ongoing system-wide issues enabled support team to better anticipate and resolve increased support volumes.

Product and Finance

• Product team had a predictive model related to each customer’s likelihood to churn. Based on the overall projected churn, the Finance team incorporated these insights into their own financial forecasting models.

Content, Marketing, and Finance

• Based on upcoming high volume events provided by the Content calendar data, the Finance team was better able to project expenses related to content distribution and customer support labor.
• The finance team was better able to project revenues working closely with the marketing team to project new customer growth from high volume events.

Customer Success Measured

By bringing all the data together into a single location and providing it back out across the organization, the following KPIs were measured, reported, and ultimately optimized:

Marketing

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Reduced due to more effective, targeted campaigns.
• Conversion Rate: Increased through personalized marketing efforts and promotions.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): Improved by delivering highly relevant content recommendations.
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): Enhanced by engaging and retaining customers with personalized content.

Customer Support

• First Contact Resolution (FCR): Increased as support agents had access to detailed customer profiles, enabling faster issue resolution.
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Improved due to more personalized and effective support interactions.
• Average Response Time: Decreased because support teams could anticipate common issues and address them proactively.
• Average Handle Time: Decreased through the availability of comprehensive customer profiles that allowed agents to quickly access all relevant information, leading to faster resolution of inquiries and more efficient support interactions.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Increased as a result of enhanced customer satisfaction and personalized support.

Product

• Feature Adoption Rate: Increased by aligning product updates with customer preferences identified in the Customer 360 view.
• User Engagement: Improved by developing features and content that resonated with users.
• Time to Market: Reduced as data-driven insights streamlined decision-making and prioritization.
• Bug Fix Rate: Increased due to proactive identification of issues based on user behavior data.

Operations

• System Uptime: Improved through optimized server loads and content delivery networks.
• Operational Efficiency: Enhanced by predicting peak usage times and planning resources accordingly.
• Cost per Stream: Reduced by streamlining operations and optimizing resource allocation.
• Incident Response Time: Decreased by using real-time data to detect and address issues promptly.

Sales

• Revenue per User (ARPU): Increased through personalized upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
• Subscription Renewal Rate: Improved by offering relevant content and personalized subscription packages.
• Churn Rate: Reduced by engaging high-risk customers with targeted offers and content.
• Sales Conversion Rate: Increased due to data-driven sales strategies and personalized offers.

Content Development

• Content Engagement Rate: Increased as data-driven insights informed content acquisition and production decisions.
• Content ROI: Enhanced by investing in content that aligned with customer preferences and drove high engagement.
• Viewer Retention: Improved by consistently delivering content that matched viewer interests.
• Content Production Cycle Time: Reduced by focusing on high-impact content areas and streamlining production processes.

Finance

• Budget Utilization Efficiency: Improved by aligning spending with data-driven insights on content and marketing effectiveness.
• Return on Investment (ROI): Increased through strategic allocation of resources based on customer behavior and preferences.
• Cost Savings: Achieved by identifying and eliminating inefficiencies in across the organization

Pivotal Allies Contribution 

Pivotal Allies provides analytics platform project management and operational services to enterprises seeking to benefit from their data.   

We provide successfully validated programs and experienced talent to support streamlining internal operations and processes to reduce overhead. We aim to assist you in becoming faster, more predictable, and more cost-effective in your missions.