Cable Programmer Requires Solution in Support of National Marketing

Starz Entertainment is the largest provider of cable and satellite-delivered movie channels in the US. It offers the Starz Super Pak^SM with up to 15 digital movie channels and Starz On Demand^SM, the first premium subscription video on-demand service. The largest challenge the company faces is differentiating itself from other premium movie channels in the marketplace.

Starz Entertainment does not sell its services directly to consumers. Instead, Starz Entertainment promotes several toll-free numbers that consumers call during nationwide marketing campaigns, including free-movie weekends. Consumers call in and are connected to their local cable provider for service.

Evolving Cable Industry Means Increased Chances for Lost Sales

Originally, calls were connected to cable offices based on the consumer's ZIP code. Starz Entertainment maintained its own database assigning each ZIP code to a cable provider. With constant merger and acquisition activity in the industry, it became very expensive to keep up with the more than 11,000 cable offices in the US. Any misdirected call was a potential lost sales opportunity and of major concern to Starz Entertainment.

Misdirected Calls Are Costly

Live agents at an outsourced service bureau answer calls that cannot be connected to the proper cable provider. These calls cost Starz Entertainment, on average, $.90 per minute of live agent time. It would take an agent approximately two minutes to complete the order, including the manual entry of name and address information.

Multifaceted Solution

Starz Entertainment needed a solution to address the biggest challenges it faced: calls routed to the wrong cable office (also known as a cable headend) and the expense of having overflow calls answered by live agents. They found the solution with TARGUSinfo On-Demand Location^SM . Used in conjunction with the National Cable Headend file, TARGUSinfo identifies the calling party's telephone number, appends a name and address, determines the exact physical location of the home and routes the call to the appropriate cable provider. The national cable data is updated quarterly by TARGUSinfo, eliminating the need for Starz Entertainment staff to maintain large look-up tables. Any interim changes to headend phones can be incorporated through a simple table update which did not exist with ZIP code routing.

With overflow calls, TARGUSinfo automatically returns the name and address of the caller to the screen of the live agent based on the caller's home telephone number. Starz Entertainment found an average time savings of 36 seconds per call using TARGUSinfo.

Results

"By going to TARGUSinfo we are anticipating a 20% decrease in our cost per call," says Darla Newton, an 800 number consultant for Starz Entertainment. With an annual call volume of 1 million calls at an average cost of $1.50 per call, a 20% reduction translates into a savings of $300,000 per year. Starz Entertainment also anticipates "an increase in the number of calls being routed to the ‘right' location," which means fewer lost sales. The ability to target market anywhere in the US adds great value to our marketing programs. And, Newton adds, "TARGUSinfo provides excellent support, has been timely, professional, helpful and customer focused."