AT&T: Engaging Customers with Personalized Videos

The Challenge: Gaining customer attention and engagement is tough. Marketer’s attempts at “personalization” have not been effective. Can personalized videos engage customers? AT&T thinks so and has the results to prove it.

How important is a personal connection with your customers? Critical, says Danny Kalish, co-founder of Idomoo, “Today’s consumers are nostalgic for the personal relationships they once enjoyed with their service providers.  This type of emotional connection engenders loyalty, which is as valuable to organizations as innovation in products or services.”

Today’s customers are overwhelmed with the flood of marketing “spray and pray” blasts. To really engage them, marketers need to make it obvious that unlike their previous messaging, new communications are truly and obviously personalized and relevant.

With this in mind, AT&T has been testing auto-generated personalized videos in its billing for its wireless services. Subscribers receive an email with a link to a video, which addresses the subscriber by name before going through each element of their personal bill, anticipating and answering customer concerns along the way. The content the customer sees are his or her own, not generic examples -- and it’s all clearly laid out.

The results have been very encouraging:

1. Over 85% of customers have found the bill helpful.

2. Almost 80% of customers open and watch the video bill to completion.

3. Significant reduction in bill-related calls.

4. In July, AT&T and SundaySky won the Global Telecoms 2012 Consumer Service Award for Consumer Billing Innovation.

Key Takeaways for Marketers

1. Add new dimensions to your communications.
Help customers receive the information they need. This will engage customers short-term and build long-term loyalty.

2. Engage customers throughout the lifecycle.
Personalized attention should not stop at the moment of acquisition. Personalize all customer communications such as billing, offers, specials, and customer appreciation touches. Every communication is an opportunity to strengthen the relationship.

3. Relevance is the key.
Customers will embrace a message when it makes sense to them as individuals. Simply adding a name to the beginning of a general blast is not personalization.  For example, a personalized video can deliver personal information in a multi-sensory way that clearly highlights relevant information both visually and audibly.

4. Constantly test.
Testing different versions will enable you to learn what message and media mix is most effective.