Media industry focus: Investing in customer experience without distraction

Putting the initial disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic behind us, we are now settling into a new normal.  For many of us this means our work/life balance has achieved a new equilibrium, and gone are the days of locked-down disruption during which we binged on TV and news across all the available media.

As a result of these changed times, media broadcasters and publishers need to work harder to attract and retain an audience, and innovation in customer experience plays a central role in this battle for attention.

It’s not enough to expect audiences to sign up for monthly access and remain loyal subscribers for years to come. Churn rates for streaming video increased to an average of 23% across all ages in the UK, according to this 2022 Digital media trends article by Deloitte.  Perhaps even more unsettling was Netflix’s early 2022 announcement that as many as two million subscribers were expected to quit the service in the three months to July 2022, as reported by the BBC.

Printed publications are far from immune to attrition, with this Equinet article highlighting that magazine deaths outnumbered launches by almost 4:1 in the UK, with the number of magazine brands shrinking by 16% year on year as of 2020. It’s likely that 2022 will see an even greater decline in printed publications.

It’s not all doom and gloom though.  Digital media consumption has risen from the ashes of print‘s decline, and looks set to continue. Some estimates (like this eMarketer report) are predicting over 6 hours of digital media consumption per individual, per day, in the UK in 2022 and beyond.  Media producers and distributors will compete for their share of this time in increasingly innovative ways, with customer experience as one of the most important differentiators.

The impact of customer experience on churn

Customer experience (or CX) has a massive influence on customer churn. Research by Harvard Business Review indicates that customers giving the lowest customer experience score were likely to leave a subscription within the year, whereas those giving one of the top two customer experience scores were likely to remain subscribed for a further six years.

In a recent study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Corcentric, it was found that customer experience improvements ranked even higher than revenue growth as a business priority for CFOs across the UK, US, and France!

It stands to reason that a great customer experience is likely to retain customers for longer, but in our connected online world of influencers and reviews, meeting and exceeding customer expectations is likely to influence subscription decisions for an even wider audience.

A good CX strategy should take customer needs into account throughout their lifecycle, from onboarding through user experience, customer support, and every other touchpoint in the customer journey.

Digital-first media & entertainment

Media companies have been at the forefront of technology adoption for decades now. The entertainment industry thrives on eye-catching delivery, often enabled by the latest in digital wizardry.

Digital laggards have felt the pain as their competitors gained market share by meeting or exceeding customer expectations for digital delivery. Many media companies would now consider themselves as digital-first operations.

The paradigm of digital media meshes well with the need for great customer experience. If customers provide permission to use their personal data for personalized experiences, they are rewarded with more relevant and appealing content. This in turn builds their attachment to the media channel delivering this content, improving retention.

The more subscribed customers a media channel has interacting with its content, the easier it becomes to optimize delivery to specific demographics, without needing external market research. Engagement data fuels delivery decisions in real time through algorithmic automation.

Customer experience is bolstered further through the self-service capabilities of on-demand media channels, allowing customers to consume what they want, when they want, and be alerted to the latest in their area of interest at their convenience. Digital-first media places customers at the heart of the experience, improving loyalty and advocacy as a result.

How can media companies liberate the capital to invest in customer experience innovation?

The benefits of a great customer experience and improved customer engagement may be easy to see, but the digital transformation required to deliver this is an unwelcome expense. Media companies have enough of a challenge investing in the producing or acquiring of engaging content. So how are media companies supposed to compete in delivering enhanced customer experiences?

Funding comes in all shapes and sizes, but one area overlooked by some businesses is using their accounts receivable ledger to unlock cash trapped in working capital. This makes perfect sense as a form of fast, inexpensive funding. Days sales outstanding, or DSO, is a measure of the cash owed to your business, so any reduction of this can be viewed as getting access to your cash sooner. There’s no need to borrow or sell off assets to access this.

You can find out how Corcentric Managed Accounts Receivable enables businesses to fix DSO and liberate working capital, without risking heavy-handed collections tactics and other concerns associated with invoice factoring, in our white paper on How Managed Accounts Receivable Unlocks Working Capital.

Furthermore, the guarantee of invoice payments within a specific number of days gives you unparalleled assurance of cash flow – all invoices are paid on time, every time. Combining a non-recourse agreement with these guaranteed payment timeframes eliminates bad debt immediately and permanently.

Put management distractions aside and focus on customer experience

At Corcentric, we understand that no one does your job better than you, so why get bogged down with invoice delivery and collections when you can focus on more strategic and profitable activity such as delivering on your roadmap for new content and products, or driving up subscriptions, and enhancing customer engagement?

By engaging Corcentric to provide accounts receivable as a managed service, you can put aside the management distractions associated with the accounts receivable process, as well as eliminating the need for credit insurance, payments processing, cash allocation, and collections costs. There are also no IT overheads, software investments, recruitment or management requirements to account for.

At Corcentric, we’ve been helping some of the UK’s biggest media organizations drive down DSO and outsource unwanted complexity from accounts receivable for well over a decade. Our experience can help guide your company through technology, advisory, and managed services to optimize its process efficiency, liberate working capital, and be in a better position to carve out a competitive position through enhanced customer experience.

To learn more about streamlining and transforming your business processes, and liberating working capital, contact us at [email protected].