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If Round 1 of the showdown of streaming services was a race of new players to get into the space, and Round 2 was about winning and keeping customers, Round 3 looks like it may have taken on a much darker outlook: the battle against subscription churn.

While half of TV viewers in the U.S. have cut the cable cord, a quarter of U.S. subscribers have also cancelled at least three streaming services over the past two years.

The explanation behind all this churn is simple: customers are streamlining their spending habits around fewer services. An overwhelming 99% of U.S. households subscribe to at least one paid streaming video provider (and three different ones on average), according to a Forbes study.?

But, according to a digital media trends survey from Deloitte, 36% say the content they receive isn’t worth the price.? At the same time, there’s been an explosion of options for every type of consumer. Practically every content owner has launched their own direct-to-consumer service — Disney, Apple, NBC, not to mention the numerous music and gaming services out there.

Simple household economics creates a new conundrum for media companies: how can you keep customers from deciding your platform is no longer worth the cost? Deliver the best content and viewer experience possible – ideally in the first three months of acquiring a new customer, according to Markus Sch?fer, director of product management and technical architect.?

According to research from Gartner Group, 80% of a company’s future profits will come from existing customers. Further, it costs five times more to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones. Yet most companies spend the majority of their marketing budget trying to acquire new customers.

With myriad streaming service options out there for consumers to choose from, you must invest in subscriber retention and loyalty programmes to survive and thrive. Here’s how streaming services can do that using their data and AI.?

Use data to understand and connect customers

Media companies collect a lot of data. Use it to uncover actionable insights and improve the subscriber experience. For example, AI can flag downward consumption trends, which can signal a subscriber’s propensity to churn and monitor service interruptions and viewer experiences (buffering, streaming quality, fidelity metrics, etc.) that drive frustration and could cause churn.

AI can help create a retention strategy, which involves reaching out to customers who are less engaged or impacted by service outages or inferior viewing experiences. The technology assists in creating and optimising personalised communications with acknowledgment of the issue, exclusive offers, and reminders of new content they’re likely to be interested in.

For example, if a subscriber makes multiple and frequent customer service contacts due to buffering issues, AI can flag that they are likely unsatisfied and at risk of churning. Based on this signal, the subscriber can be placed on a churn-prevention journey powered by the CRM platform. The subscriber receives personalised communications with acknowledgment of the issue, an exclusive offer, and reminders of new content they are sure to love.

Use AI to help create seamless, personalised experiences

The old done-to-death cliche “content is king” still holds true. Depth and variety of movies, TV series, news, comedy, sports, and so on, are what primarily drives people to try a streaming service, and it’s ultimately why they’ll stay. No matter how good a personalised recommendation engine or user experience is, consumers won’t stick around if they don’t find content that speaks to them.

AI can ensure a subscriber is served with the content that’s most likely to keep them engaged. It does this with data like demographics, and viewing preferences that can be gathered during onboarding, such as what kind of movie or TV show genres a subscriber prefers. 

More and more data is collected as a subscriber uses your service more and more, allowing AI to curate playlists or thematic content collections based on their preferences. The more data you have, the more holistic view of the subscriber you have, allowing your service to make better recommendations, better marketing campaigns and better service. AI can also help combat the threat of churn when a subscriber finishes a series that they subscribed to the platform to watch, by suggesting related content they’d likely enjoy. 

But it goes beyond that. AI is especially relevant when it comes to ensuring your subscribers have the right kind of content at their fingertips at the right time. Your integrated AI can almost instantly create promotions around a live pay-per-view boxing match targeted to a customer who’s been watching a lot of sports content, for example. 

Give your service crew a complete view of the subscriber

Equip care agents with the tools they need to connect with subscribers, including a customer relationship management (CRM) platform powered by data and AI that acts as a single source of truth for subscriber data. With a CRM, you can create a complete view of each subscriber, including:

• Service or case history
• Device preferences
• Content engagement
• Genre (like action movies, sports)

This 360-degree view helps you maximise subscriber care agent productivity by, for example, providing them with AI-generated responses or summarisation of help articles that can easily be used to resolve an issue. It also helps product and marketing teams improve and further personalise your overall subscriber experience.

What also keeps them around is superior self-service offerings. Implementing platforms that emphasise simple tools for users to, for instance, update their payment information, receive personalised subscriber service on any device, upgrade their packages, or stepping in with AI-powered chatbots to handle basic service issues and accelerate issue resolution will help you rise to the top.

By serving subscribers intelligently by leveraging data, you can create seamless, personalised experiences augmented by AI technology that not only delight users, but convert them into long-term customers who can’t live without their media subscriptions.