Introduction
In the ever-evolving world of digital technology, businesses must keep pace with the latest innovations to maintain a competitive edge. Onebridge, a leader in digital transformation, has been leveraging its expertise in data analytics to help organizations navigate the complexities of today’s digital landscape. This case study will examine how Onebridge helped a satellite radio station in North America significantly improve its subscriber base and how this partnership demonstrates the transformative power of data analytics.
The Challenge
A satellite radio station in North America, boasting a 40% market share, faced several challenges related to growing and retaining subscribers. The challenges were as follows:
Conversion from free to paid subscriptions:The radio station needed to increase the conversion rate of users from free trial subscriptions to paid ones. The station offered premium automobile owners a free three-month trial subscription but struggled to convince users to continue their subscription after the trial period ended. Understanding the reasons behind this failure and addressing them was crucial to boosting subscriber numbers.
Competitive pressure:The radio station’s subscriber base was declining due to fierce competition, necessitating strategies to retain existing subscribers. The station faced growing competition from streaming services and other audio entertainment options, requiring it to differentiate itself and offer a superior experience to its listeners.
Customer support for renewals:Inefficient customer support practices negatively impacted subscription renewals. Customers who wished to renew their subscriptions were often forwarded to different departments by support agents, leading to a frustrating experience that deterred renewals. Identifying the reasons for this issue and addressing them was essential to improve the renewal process.
Service billing:The radio station partnered with mobile operators to maintain service in areas with weak or unavailable satellite signals, requiring analysis of billing data from these partners. The radio station integrated a SIM card into the satellite radio receiver, allowing the device to switch to the mobile network to continue streaming when the satellite signal weakened. Analyzing logs to understand billing from different mobile partners was necessary to ensure accurate billing and maintain a positive user experience.
Our Approach
Onebridge recognized that the key to addressing these challenges lay in harnessing the power of data and analytics. As a result, the company utilized cutting-edge technologies and methodologies to analyze the radio station’s data, transforming it into actionable insights and leading to significant improvements in subscriber conversion, retention, and customer support.
Conversion from free to paid subscriptions: Onebridge analyzed user demographics, listening preferences, and device usage patterns, enabling the radio station to tailor marketing strategies that incentivized users to convert from free trials to paid subscriptions. By understanding the preferences and habits of their users, the radio station could create targeted offers that appeal to individual listeners. For instance, they could offer discounted tickets for rock concerts in New York to subscribers who lived in the area and enjoyed that genre of music. They could even surprise customers with free access to concerts on their birthdays. These personalized promotions increased the chances of conversion and fostered a stronger connection between the radio station and its subscribers.
Competitive pressure: By analyzing user behavior and preferences, Onebridge helped the radio station to optimize its programming to better align with audience needs, ultimately boosting subscriber retention. Using analytics, the radio station gained insights into the listening habits of its users, such as the duration of listening to a particular genre of music in the morning or evening, the frequency of pausing the music stream, and the preferred genres at different times of the day. Armed with this information, the radio station could adjust its programming schedule to offer content that resonated with its audience, helping to differentiate itself from competitors and retain subscribers.
Customer support for renewals: Onebridge implemented a Python-based solution to analyze over 100,000 daily customer support records, identifying inefficiencies and improving the overall renewal process. The solution examined various metrics, such as the effectiveness of addressing customer queries, the number of times a call was forwarded to a different agent, the mean time to resolve queries, and the resulting sales. Before implementing the Onebridge solution, the radio station’s database was poorly structured and lacked visibility into operations. With the new system, the radio station saw significant growth in subscription renewal rates and increased customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores.
Service billing: Onebridge replaced the radio station’s existing billing solution, which was expensive and time-consuming, with a more cost-effective and efficient alternative. The existing solution took nearly four hours to process a day’s worth of data and was costly to maintain. Onebridge’s implementation reduced costs, enabling the CIO’s office to save $0.5 million over a few years and dramatically improved time-to-insight, allowing for more rapid analysis and informed decision-making.
To achieve these outcomes, Onebridge utilized a combination of advanced technologies and methodologies:
- On-prem Teradata-hosted analysis layer was modernized in the AWS data lake. Onebridge built the architecture to ingest data with billions of records into the data lake.
- An analysis layer was built for quicker insight generation, leveraging Kafka, Kinesis, Python, PySpark, Scala, Java, and Talend.
- Next-gen applications were built, and data integrations were enabled using AWS native solutions.
- They built a plug-and-play API ingestion framework on Python and PySpark.
- Parallelization of workloads in AWS Glue automation enabled – spinning up dynamic child glue jobs for native AWS workloads.
- Proof of Concept (POC) and Proof of Value (POV) using Apache HUDI delta lake.
- Faster and more effective data analysis enabled using SingleStore.
- Near-real-time data feeds enabled for finance and customer service using a PySpark-based solution.
- API pipelines developed that could be reused, saving 40% in effort.
Business Value Unlocked
Onebridge’ expertise in data analytics delivered tangible results for the satellite radio station:
- 7-10% improvement in subscriber retention
- 40% of data ingestions moved from batch mode to near-real-time mode for faster analysis
- 600% increase in cost savings through modernized workload management (reduced computational and data storage costs)
- $0.5 million in savings enabled (in a few years) from better management of mobile connectivity partners
- Integrated customer engagement platform for call center analytics, improving customer satisfaction (CSAT)
Conclusion
This case study showcases the transformative power of data analytics and the critical role that digital transformation leaders like Onebridge play in helping organizations adapt to the rapidly changing digital landscape. By leveraging Onebridge’ expertise, the satellite radio station overcame its challenges and achieved remarkable improvements in subscriber conversion, retention, and customer support.
The success of this partnership highlights the importance of adopting a data-driven approach to decision-making in today’s digital world. As organizations grapple with an ever-increasing volume of data, companies like Onebridge will play a crucial role in helping them unlock the value of this information and make confident, data-driven decisions that drive growth and success.
Moreover, this case study demonstrates the value of collaboration between technology partners and businesses to achieve common goals. By working closely with Onebridge, the radio station could identify and address its challenges, ultimately enabling it to provide a better experience for its subscribers.
