CSG Predicts Changes, Tailors Cable Products

CSG Systems International Inc. predicts customer preferences, demands and needs will change more in the cable industry during the next five years than they have in the past 20 years combined. ?

The company says it analyzed current trends in the cable industry to come up with its predictions, including:

>> In five years, the number of cable customers under a single roof will grow exponentially. As such, operators will need to expand this view to better understand every customer within a given household, including each family member and the devices they use, to proactively deliver a personalized experience to each.  ?

>> Cable operators will dominate the digital-content market, becoming media conglomerates that can provide competitive pricing and packaging to customers leveraging the operator’s network as well as customers leveraging other networks. TV Everywhere initiatives can provide a critical platform for providers to increase the uptake of new services—and even premium services—as well as to retain customers by offering a more portable content-viewing experience that crosses multiple devices including laptops, iPads and smartphones.??

>> The demand for home intelligence offerings will surge in the next five years. Machine-to-machine (M2M) communications for utilities and home security will continue to provide opportunities for cablecos that bring critical network resources directly into the home.  ?

Taking these predictions and other factors into account, CSG has introduced its Customer Communication Center (CCC) to automate personalized communication to customers through their channel of preference: voice, text and email.?

Here’s how it works: CCC provides a central hub for automating customer communications and for capturing customer profiles, helping to eliminate multiple disparate systems to support various types of customer communications. This solution delivers an intelligent integration that links such events as delivering a bill, promotional offers, customer care communications, network utilization and more with the preferred way to communicate that event, based on customer preferences. ? ? 

The solution also offers a single customer profile that stores important customer information in one place, used by all systems across the enterprise and taking into account multiple members of the same household who have different preferences. ? 

CCC also includes these additional features:

>> Interaction Tracking: Helps the operator assess the value of an interaction channel and to tailor communications strategy accordingly.  

>> Event Manager: Built using CSG’s Interactivate product line – a multi-service activation platform designed to initiate any service on any network – that can be leveraged to provide the critical link between customers and timely service delivery. Event Manager can also be applied to help manage real-time needs such as sending an instant message during an outage, or alerting a customer that a prepaid balance is about to be depreciated.? ?

CSG will demonstrate its new CCC solution at next week’s Cable Show in Boston.