CRM in Action: Contact Centers

The Challenge: Combat churn The Solution: Time Warner Cable of Desert Cities (TWCDC) faces an interesting challenge. Its more than 140,000 subscribers include seasonal residents who spends winters in the greater Palm Springs, CA, area the company serves, as well as a significant number of customers who, because they live within homeowners' associations, are not listed as individual customers whom TWCDC can reach directly. Thus keeping in contact with these customers to retain them, upsell them, and keep them from switching to satellite would require a creative solution. Initially IT was involved, says Jay Guagliardo, vice president of marketing for TWCDC. "Our IT director was talking to a customer on a plane, and he said we never call him. He said, 'Just call me and tell me what's new, what's coming up, how's the service,'" Guagliardo says. This help set a spark. TWCDC took two steps: 1) it implemented CSG ProfitNow!, a suite of solutions that helps predict which customers are at greatest risk of churning, identifies steps to keep them, and predicts which customers are most likely to buy additional services; and 2) it instituted a policy called the digital care call. "We look at customers through CSG and call every one of them," Guagliardo says. "It's working great. We're not pushing [customers], just checking in with them." Guagliardo says that using ProfitNow! maks a real difference in reducing churn. "I could start at the A's and go to the Z's, but somebody in the Z's may be churning," he says. Additionally, TWCDC's 45 call center employees feel more motivated, because they are directly involved in making decisions that help improve customer satisfaction and profitability. "The internal buy-in is key," Guagliardo says. "The most important element to this is the customer service people behind it. They need to feel a part of it." The Payoff: TWCDC saved 82.7 percent of the customers identified as the highest at risk of churning, and enticed 95 percent of customers identified as most likely to buy additional products and services to accept the offers presented to them. This increased TWCDC's average annual revenue per user by $287. --Tom Kaneshige