How operational insights can power up your video streaming service

The first thought that often crosses our minds when we narrow down the analysis of data collected from operational devices and platforms is that it will only serve the IT and technical mid-level managers to help keep their services alive. 

However, the reality is very different. At first, raw data directly coming from platforms and devices may seem odd, hard-to-understand numbers from other areas of a company. But the depth and range of powerful insights that can be built from that raw data – once it’s worked out, co-related and classified – can prove to be a game changer for streaming/TV operation.  

Rightfully hyped over the past few years, the assigning of internal, multidisciplinary squads to run design sprints on how to improve the customer journey/experience and reduce video streaming issues, is highly prevalent among companies. Well … guess what? Operational data insights are, in fact, an important input for the task.   

Market campaigns always demand investments, and the lead cost for finding new customers can be quite high depending on your choice of segmentation Investments tend to have a better return (ROI) when applied to regions where the company knows that its service excels. The same is valid when running cross-selling/up-selling campaigns to the customer base, it tends to have a better return for customers and regions where the service excels rather than struggles.  

Enhancing user experience

I remember a situation in the past when I was working with my team on the user interface (UI) and set-top box middleware of a major PayTV operator in Brazil. During a discussion with the operator’s product director following a sprint review meeting, we presented some UI updates, he asked us to repeat several steps of the presentation a few times and hit me with something like: “Danilo, this is terrible! The way we are treating our subscribers is outrageous! We are scaring them away, letting them think they are doing something wrong, while we should be embracing them and inviting them to buy this content. When people purchase a package extension, it is because they want it, not because the user journey/experience led them to it.” He could not be more correct!  

Just to be clear, the situation described above simply involved a subscriber accessing (or trying to access) a channel to which s/he did not have access. This feedback led to a complete review about how the messages were presented to the subscribers in various situations. 

The proactive and frequent analysis of a PayTV/streaming subscriber’s user experience by magnifying the presence of errors is important to improve NPS, reduce churn and lower operational costs related to customer service and truck-rolls. 

The word “error” has its own archetype, and it is a bad one. However, when properly classifying errors, you will see that several of them can lead to improvements in onboarding, training and other areas. There are also numerous errors that hint about an imminent upsell opportunity.   

Find out more about Synamedia Clarissa Operational Insights here. We would love to show you how Clarissa has been supporting critical management decisions at streaming companies across Europe and Asia.