DMNews talks with Scott Terrill, VP of marketing, Suddenlink Communications

Scott Terrill

Scott Terrill, VP of marketing for cable, phone and Internet service provider Suddenlink Communications, discusses Pluris' Offer Management and Optimization

Q: What did Suddenlink do before implementing Pluris' service?

A: Our sales and upgrade process was unpredictable. While our service reps had compelling data regard­ing available offers and customer history, the customer data was disjointed and not optimized or inte­grated in a way that made the sales process easy or compelling.

Q: How does the technology work?

A: We implemented the technology in June, which let reps receiving inbound calls select from a wide offer set and see the single most relevant offer, or upsell, for a specific subscriber. An offer screen that was put over the top of the interface screen they used gave them the best offer of the right products to the right consumer at the right price. The interface was brought together in one simple banner. If they needed more information on that offer, they could click the banner to get additional details.

Q: Why was this the best solution?

A: It made the transaction easier faster and more relevant for both our consumers and our reps. The service was fully integrated as opposed to having an enhanced rules-based type of engine, which was nearly impossible for us to man­age effectively for any sustainable period of time. We really wanted to rely on analytics and modeling versus hundreds of rudimentary ‘if/then' statements to get the best results for our reps. For our busi­ness, it's all about the bundle. We want as many products in the home as possible to create that value for our customer base.

Q: What was the most compelling result of the implementation?

A: From the rep perspective, we recently did an analysis that showed the reps that were using the solution were selling a full 30% more than those who weren't. A lot of those reps were even selling 50% more than before the solution was in place. That's a really big deal to us.

Q: What was the biggest takeaway from the experience?

A: Instead of relying on a sales process that was unpredictable, this gave us the ability to offer a true optimized and integrated way of selling, which is more powerful for our consumers and our reps. It put the predictability back into the sales process.