IPTV

Optimize IPTV Service Delivery Throughout the Customer Lifecycle

IPTV service delivery adds complexity to the management of multiple IP-based services to a home or other location. Employing support automation and related best practices for installation and ongoing customer support is essential to ensuring a great customer experience. SupportSoft solutions allow digital service providers to automate customer deployment, provisioning and ongoing support for IPTV, as well as other triple play services, to cost-effectively maintain a high service quality for their customers. High quality for IPTV can be defined as picture quality, availability of services (e.g. video-on-demand or the right set of channels) and service features (e.g. picture-in-picture, interactive program guides or digital video recording).

 

Case Study: Belgacom Gets Off to Fast Start with IPTV

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"IPTV-The Clear Picture" White Paper

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SupportSoft solutions can improve IPTV service profitability through:

  • Faster IPTV service deployment via installation automation and verification
  • Increased customer adoption and reduced churn
  • Reduced call center and truck-roll volumes by identifying and resolving problems before they impact the customer
  • Reduced customer support costs through enforcement of data-driven best practices for problem diagnosis and resolution
  • Increased operational efficiency via targeted problem escalation
  • Reduced time-to-problem-resolution through tools to manage IPTV set-top boxes

"Belgacom's goal is not simply acquiring new customers but retaining them through creating the best possible experience for any triple play service they may choose. For Belgacom TV, that value begins with successful, automated installation of an iDTV connection using SupportSoft SmartAccess."

—Belgacom

A Simple Customer Experience - From IPTV Installation to Ongoing Enjoyment

By employing easy-to-use multimedia tools, service providers can create a useful introduction to their service, including the ability to automatically guide a subscriber through the installation process. Further, automatic configuration and device management tools can also ensure that the newly installed customer is getting the correct services (e.g., video-on-demand), as well as ensure that they are receiving a high quality IPTV experience. Additionally, these tools can even help to fix problems before the customer notices that one exists.

Knowledge-enabled, intuitive self- and assisted-service tools can also speed problem diagnosis and resolution to help further reduce the likelihood of customer churn. Not only can support automation empower the customer to fix their own problems, avoiding the need to wait "on hold," but it also provides the call center staff with enhanced tools to fix a problem when the customer does call.

Service Verification and Automated Best Practices

Once the customer installation is complete, potential problems are reduced by verifying - before the technician leaves the premises or the customer completes the installation themselves - that the service is working correctly. Automated verification allows service providers to ensure correct installation and enforce best practices if something needs to be fixed. If the problem can't be fixed for any reason, the software can automatically transfer the problem to the best support professional for follow-up.

By verifying services and using best-practices to resolve problems, a provider can increase service quality, more efficiently use field personnel, reduce operational costs and minimize customer churn.

Network Visibility: A View Toward More Efficient Problem Diagnosis and Resolution

The delivery of increasingly complex services like IPTV is increasing the number of customer support calls and truck-rolls. Currently, when a customer contacts a call center with a technical problem, customer service representatives (CSRs) may not be able to perform even preliminary diagnostics, such as isolating the problem to the subscriber's home or the service provider's network.

SupportSoft IPTV solutions provide a "network view" in a way that allows even the most novice customer service representative -- or even customers themselves -- to solve or at least triage and forward the problem to the right person for repair. This prevents unnecessary truck-rolls, which can frustrate the customer by wasting their time and, just as importantly, waste service provider money and technical resources trying to solve a problem in the wrong way.