AT&T: Interactive TV aiding customer retention

AT&T isn’t releasing numbers but does find customers who use the interactive features of its AT&T U-Verse IPTV service are less likely to churn, said G.W. Shaw, AT&T executive director of U-verse marketing.

AT&T this week unveiled an NCAA March Madness application in partnership with Yahoo Sports that lets U-verse subscribers enter their NCAA men’s basketball tournament choices on their PCs and then track their bracket’s performance on the TV while also having access to both data and video information on teams, games and individual players and statistics.

“I don’t think we are ready to go so far as to say we are never going to charge for interactive applications, but today we believe that by providing them at no extra charge, these applications differentiate us in the market,” Shaw said. “That’s an important part of the decision-making process in the applications software we put out there – we try to find something for everyone. We know that it makes our product stickier and customers churn less.”

AT&T has done research, particularly on the AT&T U-bar, its first interactive application that provides customized news, sports, weather, traffic and stock information, that shows customers who use the interactive features are less likely to churn, Shaw said. The basic information that customizes U-bar is set up when a customer signs up for high-speed Internet service and automatically flows through to the TV set, Shaw said.

“We do know how many consumers use it, although we don’t release those numbers,” Shaw said. “We are very happy with the success we see with U-bar, and a lot of that is about ease of use. We do have abilities to quantify usage–we do a lot of research on what percentage of consumers are using interactive applications, and we know when they do use it, they are much more likely to stay with AT&T.”

Consumers only need to hit one button on their remote control to access the U-bar information, and updates are easily done via the PC, Shaw said.

“We work under the objective that TV is still primarily a lean-back experience where the consumer is sitting down watching the service and doesn’t want to think hard” about how to make interactivity work, Shaw said. That’s why AT&T’s more complex interactive programs, including fantasy football and the current NCAA March Madness interactivity, are based on consumer inputs into a PC, which flow through to their U-Verse IPTV service.

All of AT&T’s interactive programming is based on the Microsoft Mediaroom technology, and AT&T has benefitted from Microsoft’s constant improvements on its platform as well as from application programming interfaces that enable AT&T to work with partners such as Yahoo, Accuweather and Flickr, Shaw said.