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Success Story

Connect with customers on the go with WTVE

Looking to connect with customers on the go, techy folks, and sports junkies in your community? If so, consider launching watchTVeverywhere (WTVE) if you haven’t done so already. This service provides mobile access to popular television programming using an integration with Customer Master to ensure each customer has viewing rights to channels in their programming package.

Panora Telco, located in Panora, Iowa, is a great example of a company successfully using WTVE. The company has been using WTVE since October of 2015. Jaime Waddle, Panora Telco’s Administrative & Customer Service Director, said besides giving customers the ability to watch programming away from home, they’ve found WTVE gives customers the freedom to choose when and how they want to watch TV.

“WTVE allows us to offer customers an added benefit to subscribing to our video services for little cost while adding value,” she said. “For example, we have had a few snowbirds not disconnect their video for the winter because of WTVE.”

Waddle said WTVE has also let customers with children away at college save money. Instead of subscribing to a different company’s services, customers’ kids can access Panora Telco’s programming remotely through WTVE as long as they have a reliable internet connection and unlimited data.

To advertise the service, Panora Telco uses a banner ad on their website, their Facebook page, and word of mouth. While she said WTVE’s current usage is modest with 12 percent of Panora Telco’s customers registered and five percent actively using the service, its popularity can increase depending on what’s hot at the moment.

As you would expect, sports programming is often the driver of usage. She said the ESPN channels, the Big Ten Network, Fox Sports channels, and NBC Sports are all consistently in the top 10 for WTVE viewership. Waddle said during the recent NCAA basketball tournament, numbers for the Turner channels broadcasting the games spiked as customers caught tournament games on the go.

Easy to get started
Launching the service was easy. Waddle said from the time Panora Telco’s paperwork was submitted to WTVE, the NCTC, and MACC, it only took 22 days before the company’s customers had access to the service.

“As programmers approved and integrated us, we were notified and MACC was ready for them,” she said. “It couldn’t have gone any smoother.”

For companies who aren’t utilizing WTVE, Waddle said it goes back to adding value to video services.
“It’s an opportunity to add customer value at a low cost,” she said. “And it’s easy to implement and easy for customers to use.”