These are the chief findings of a report just published by UK based vendor of billing and customer relationship management (CRM) products Paywizard.

The company says it conducted comprehensive interviews with C-level executives from operators throughout Europe and found that they nearly all plan to increase their use of customer analytics over the next 12-18 months. At least there is considerable awareness of their failure to harness data so far with 80 per cent of respondents believing they are only at the beginning of their customer analytics journey. They concede they must improve their ability to analyze consumer data to deliver a good customer experience consistently. The implication is that operators have been slow to embrace the more precise and targeted data down to the level of individual customers available from their OTT services in particular.

“Lengthy interviews with the operators taking part in the study show clearly that virtually everyone providing a pay TV service sees analytics as critical to understanding the customer journey and having the ability to take actions that enhance the customer experience – such as highly targeted offers and precisely-timed communications,” said Bhavesh Vaghela, Paywizard’s Chief Executive. “But most still are unable to do that. There is a large gap between where operators are and where they want to be.”

The report, Customer analytics in the post-OTT age: insights from European service providers, identifies six crucial decision points where data analytics could make a much greater impact than at present. These are: new customer acquisition; tracking content consumption for recommendations and offers; upselling and cross-selling to boost average revenue per user; churn prediction and reduction; billing accuracy; and winning back lost subscribers.

According to Vaghela, the research demonstrates that customer experience has emerged as a key competitive differentiator in the pay TV sector with data analytics playing a critical role. Yet video service providers still lack the tools to communicate properly with their customers and exploit the data now available. The report indicates that operators are weakest of all in the two areas of predicting churn and winning back lost subscribers. However, operators surveyed are mostly convinced that analytics can have greatest potential impact of all when applied to customers either on the verge of churning or who have already done so. Many operators though have not yet considered the potential of analytics to extract more revenue from existing customers through upselling.

The study also confirms not surprisingly that broadcasters and standalone OTT providers are more advanced in their use of analytics than Telcos that have only quite recently entered the video business.

The report confirms the findings of an earlier study also by Paywizard on the consumer side. Published in March 2018 and based on a survey of over 3000 customers in three key markets, the US, UK and Philippines, this report found that 85 per cent of all respondents expect a positive, personalized customer experience from their pay TV providers throughout the customer lifecycle. Yet as many as 31 per cent had experienced a negative interaction or issue with at least one operator in the previous 12 months. The report Show the Love with customer experience, found that such incidents damaged view of the brand for three-quarters of those reporting a negative interaction or issue. Only a quarter felt the issue had been resolved satisfactorily.