A pair of aces?

10/12/07 BY Jonathan Callcut

It’s pretty fashionable currently to knock the telco content service providers for playing at media, having no creative talent and generally offering too little too late.

Whilst I would tend to agree that the majority have a lot to learn when it comes to the art of retailing content, I’m more optimistic for them than some. I see they have two real potential aces: Control over delivery and a history of customer service.

  • Delivery – If you’re going to create a trusted relationship with your customers, isn’t it pretty important that you can guarantee that they are going to receive their goods in tiptop condition in the fashion they expect? We all know that the expectations for content quality are pretty high how do you meet them if you’ve no control of the goods once they’ve left the depot?

    How can you offer anything but a free to air service when you’ve no end-to-end quality assurance? Compression, pier to pier, streaming and CDN’s all help but at the end of the day what you really need is ‘wave through’ prioritisation for worthy customers. Telco’s have the ability to do this. Looks like an Ace to me!

  • Customer Service – I’m not yet convinced by the business model that says online is the same as broadcast and advertising funded. Seems to me that it misses the essential point of interactivity, the one to one relationship. Surely, the way to exploit online is to sell to this relationship in all ways, including advertising. This does presuppose that you know how to establish and keep the relationship going, though.

    If Telco’s don’t yet understand the concept of audiences then broadcasters certainly don’t yet understand the concept of customers. Nasty people that phone you up and moan when they don’t get what they expect! Clogging up call centre and costing you a fortune! Getting customer service wrong sinks more businesses than pretty much anything else. Telco’s get this and have invested massively in extensive CRM systems, remonstrating constantly over league tables and feedback loops.

    Anyone that wants to make a business from selling content will need to do the same. If this one’s not yet an ace for Telco (it does presuppose that they’re CS is currently pretty good), then I’d say it has a real potential to be one. At least they know how to do it.

    • AddThis Social Bookmark Button

    add your comment