Your TV is Ringing

The battle for the triple play is heating up. Satellite, cable, and phone companies are fighting to win your home communications and entertainment. The triple play is TV, Internet, and phone services. Pretty much every player in the game provides a discount for getting a triple play bundle. The consolidated billing feature is now universally available from all the majors, and is not more table stakes than feature. So great introductory deals to get you to switch from the competition is the primary way to get a consumer to switch. The thought is that once you get hooked to their services, that the switching costs will deter you from leaving them. You learn how to navigate their TV channels, use their email accounts, and pretty much get too busy to keep switching. In the case of satellite, you have a huge dish on the top of your house that you have installed, and have to remove, store or ignore this eye-sore. However, frugal customers are tempted to switch when they see their monthly packages come off the intro prices and make a huge increase.

So innovation, features, and lock in are critical for the triple play to succeed. Our household recently made the switch from Comcast to DirecTV. Although relearing a new channel navigation system and trying to get the TiVo to work has been a problem, there are some cool features that we did get. On one machine, we now have the DVR built into our satellite box. Any time you reduce the number of wires is a plus in my book. The coolest surprise feature we received with our package is the caller ID on TV feature. The phone rings, and a little popup on the TV shows the caller ID #. Serious WOW factor.

No matter which market your company serves, there is fierce competition. Getting a consumer to switch from a decent service is extremely difficult. When you do win your customers, your competitors will be working hard to get these customers to switch. Complacency is a path to a slow death. The key is to take a leadership position, maximize cash flow and continue to innovate like mad. Andy Grove is a key proponent of this method, and in a different but equally effective manner, Jeff Bezos has successfully managed this strategy.

Since all good things come to an end, I am not using any proprietary complementary email in case Comcast provides a compelling reason to come back to them. The fact that phone numbers are now portable also makes the switch less difficult. Hopefully DirecTV will continue to come up with WOW features like the caller ID on TV, or simply provide a great deal so future switching is unnecessary.