Paywizard enhances 'Bill' moment to help pay-TV operators drive subscriber ARPU and reduce churn

Enhanced functionality within Paywizard Agile offers greater visibility into subscriber billing processes to proactively manage the risk of churn

London(09 Jun 2016)

Paywizard, the specialist in subscriber management for pay-TV, is enhancing its Subscription, Billing and CRM platform – Paywizard Agile – arming operators with deep insight into their subscriber base, giving them better visibility into the health of their business and the tools to actively combat subscriber churn. The new functionality continues Paywizard’s strategy to support pay-TV and OTT operators to deliver a better experience across key subscriber ‘Decision Moments’ – Find, Join, Consume, Upgrade, Downgrade, Bill, Leave and Win Back.

Bhavesh Vaghela, CMO, Paywizard comments: “Monetising your content and service is much more than just collecting payment.  In our experience, proactivity during the billing process can go a long way to reducing churn.  Expired credit cards for example, can cause the loss of up to a third of a TV operator’s customer base.  The key here is for operators to understand the different reasons why subscribers are falling through the cracks and counter that with a better and more proactive consumer experience.”

The enhanced functionality is a direct response to churn caused by payment failures and errors, by offering enhanced monitoring of consumer billing data so that operators can take a more proactive and personalised approach to managing subscriber engagement. This launch is a major advancement in helping operators improve the ‘Bill’ consumer Decision Moment for its customers, and coincides with the introduction of the second ebook in the Paywizard Moments series ‘Seize the moments: Winning the 90 day battle for consumer loyalty’.

The key enhancements to Paywizard Agile are:

• Enhanced monitoring of customer billing, arming operators with visibility of the health and revenues of their subscriber base, and giving them the data to take a more proactive and personalised approach. The dashboard has the ability to access and export high-level summaries of information including billing, charges, credits, payments and audit, and is supported by the ability to activate a predetermined series of scheduled tasks such as running billing or changing the view of billing dates.
• Freemium payment capability, enabling operators to provide free services without a requirement to capture customer payment information. By introducing payment at a later stage, operators can both build loyalty from the start and streamline the sign-up experience for new subscribers. Operators can also benefit from capturing data for free content and start building a better picture of these customers.
• The Setup Payment Method function which enables Paywizard’s clients to configure the necessary payment gateways, either using out of the box options (Global Iris, PayPal and Worldpay) or by configuring their own PSP. This way operators can set up new card payment methods for consumers, thereby expanding monetisation possibilities for operators and removing a major barrier to subscriber acquisition.
• The capability to automatically create and send receipts for a customer’s subscription, which helps bring reassurance to consumers that they are being billed accurately, clearly and on time. Consumer research shows that being proactive about customer communications throughout the subscriber journey, including billing and payment issues improves brand loyalty.

The importance of the new features within Paywizard Agile are backed up by findings from consumer focus groups carried out by Decipher Media in March 2016, which are detailed in Paywizard’s latest ebook paper. The paper explores US and UK consumer perceptions and desires towards content consumption and billing, which are two of eight critical consumer Decision Moments (Find, Join, Consume, Upgrade, Downgrade, Bill, Leave, Win Back) that form the foundation of successful consumer acquisition, retention and experience. It outlines ways that operators can improve across the Consume and Bill Decision Moments to provide the best possible customer experiences at these times, using insight drawn from over a hundred success projects that Paywizard has carried out for customers.

Visit the Paywizard website to arrange a demo of the new features or to download the latest paper.

About Paywizard

Paywizard has been supporting subscription-based businesses for over 18 years. Our experience is real. Helping over 100 Pay-TV operators including: ITV, Setanta Sports, BT Sport, BoxNation.