In a matter of weeks, the Covid-19 pandemic escalated to a global health crisis and significantly disrupted the global economy.
The impact on the media and entertainment industry varies heavily by segment as consumers shift their behaviors. For most organisations, Covid-19 has expedited pre-existing conditions. For example, the traditional media industry has struggled to shift the revenue model of advertisers and readers into the digital age and now this challenge is bigger than ever before. Film and TV production for scripted and reality content has completely stopped; athletic competitions across all major sports and leagues have been postponed indefinitely; advertisers have scaled back on ad spend; and movie and stage-play theatres have been shut as well, along with live music venues and amusement parks.
As consumers are under shelter-in-place orders, home entertainment seems to be one bright spot in the media industry. Streaming services, both subscription and ad-based, and network TV and cable have seen growth in viewer engagement. Since the traffic has soared to record levels, these services now have the right audience and hence it is important to convert this Covid-19 cohort into digital subscriptions by delivering a great experience, top-class content and great price. Memories of good and bad interactions during the pandemic will stay with consumers for a long time. Companies that invest in their customers will potentially be able to rebound faster and enjoy greater customer loyalty.
If we look at a typical customer journey across channels and touchpoints (as shown below), it starts to become clear that customer experiences are more than isolated touch-points. Whether B2B or B2C, customers move through sequential stages reflected across the middle of this illustration – from a customer researching a product online to increased awareness, purchasing, payment, and customer support. Above and below the middle line, you can see touchpoints that provide brands with key opportunities to gather customer feedback, whether positive and negative.
Customer experience can be impacted during key episodes like content search and discovery, account management (billing etc.) and ad exposure. However, most organisations do not have a platform for experience data which can integrate disparate data sources, such as CRM activities, online and in-app activity and call centre feedback, and combine them with external ones, such as Glassdoor and Yelp reviews. Hence, teams across the organisation are not able to collaborate on actions and improvements.
We can compare this situation to years ago when different business functions struggled to have a common operational view of what was happening in the business. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems resolved this challenge by providing a platform to unlock business value.
Many media companies have developed their experience data platform with SAP and therefore, they understand the full story of how customers, products, brands and employee experiences impact everything from revenue to renewals. The Qualtrics Experience Management (XM) Platform™ helps broadcasters, publishers, online media companies etc. to grow and retain audiences, increase revenue, and create unique content which viewers and readers demand.
With one platform, one set of data and one source of truth our customers are creating experiences that truly delight the end customer. SAP customers are able to decide what content to continue to invest in e.g. ideas for shaping content (news stories, plot lines and characters to develop); where to invest and accelerate marketing to protect content value; and how sensitive is the customer to various price points for content. For example, Fandango - which operates in the lightning-fast world of e-commerce and entertainment – is able to track its brand, improve its products, and optimise its customer experience faster than ever before. Another example is Cox Media Group which is tracking customer feedback across radio, newspaper and TV stations to reduce research costs by 40% and has driven up revenue by presenting relevant, targeted content to their customers.
We are also working with some of our customers to address Covid-19 specific challenges. For example, a large educational media company was able to quickly configure SAP to allow their teams to provide free trial-access on a rolling basis to affected institutions and students during the transition to remote classrooms. This has ensured that their customer footprint continues to grow as they expand their subscription offerings and evolve their go-to-market strategy.
Contact us to unlock insights hidden deep in experience data or to understand how can we work together to address business challenges so that you can focus on what matters the most – customers.
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