The relevance of the user experience grows as customers demand friendlier, more stable and faster systems. These demands and the need to satisfy them were addressed at the panel ‘How to improve the user experience?’ that took place during Nextv Series South America.
Hernán Sampó, executive director of Content & Marketing at Hogarth Argentina, listed three pillars that define the customer experience: simplicity, which is equivalent to saying that the user can find what he wants in a few steps; advertising, regarding its amount, frequency and length so as not to scare away the customer; and technological development so that the greatest number of people can access the content optimally.
“The advertising boom is coming. Eight years ago, making an impact with advertising at the right time was done by humans, but today it is possible to automate the process. There are tools that speed up work and what used to take hours can now be done in minutes. (…) Creatives also have to build organic messages,” said Sampó.
Juan Weiss, Executive Director of DIRECTV Experience, pointed out that the drivers for DGo service are live sports and the flexibility of the service. In fact, one of the company’s priorities is to continue improving the live sports experience (download time, latency, etc.) and offer it on all platforms.
Regarding suggesting content, he pointed out that the greatest difficulty lies in the amount of programming and the fragmentation of the experience resulting from so many streaming offers. “We aggregators are in this battle and so are Google and others. Giving the user the possibility of finding what to watch from a centralized place is ideal, but the operator does not have feedback on what users consume in the apps.”
Roberto Lara, Strategy Director, ClaroVTR, commented that the merger of both companies has been a good experience, since the video solutions offered are complementary and now they have two strong products very well received by customers. “Several years ago we also built an IPTV product with our partner TiVO that works very well on the networks that both companies brought, both coaxial and fiber, and gives a superior customer experience. Our IPTV solution prevents the user from moving from HDMI1 to 2.”
In his opinion, one of the biggest points of tension today is ultra-fragmentation. “The customer must be at the center, giving them relevant content and simplicity to get there in the fewest steps possible. The great differentiator will be the simplicity of the access, the search, the user interface. And for that, we must offer an integrated experience (…) Still the metadata harmonization with the content providers is needed, which is the key that will allow us to use the information to obtain relevant content.”
Tim Angel, Sales Engineering Global Play TV Senior Director of TiVo, said the company’s twice-yearly user experience habit studies reveal that customers are beginning to look for additional apps to help them find content. The centralization of content becomes essential.
The surveys also revealed that: in the US a millennial customer has an average of eleven apps and previous generation users five; that customers are more tolerant of advertising in order to access a free or lower-priced streaming service; and that more content is being viewed outside the home (on tablets). “Therefore, content must be adapted to small screen formats and ensure that it remains relevant,” Angel said.