CASE STUDY - DIRECTV Improves Customer Satisfaction and Reduces Churn with Real Time Data Integration Solution
Commentary by Jack Gustafson, Director of Data Warehouse, DIRECTV
DIRECTV is a leading worldwide provider of satellite-based television services. With annual revenue of $21.5 billion, the company serves approximately 18.5 million U.S. customers and more than 6.5 million Latin American customers. In the U.S., DIRECTV ranked higher in customer satisfaction than cable nine years running (based on data from the 2001–2009 American Customer Satisfaction Index).
DIRECTV’s Challenges
DIRECTV needed to maintain high-quality customer care for its millions of satellite television customers to support growth and prevent customer churn in a highly competitive market. This included improving overall customer service levels by optimizing field technician routes for new installations and service calls.
DIRECTV also wanted to reduce fraud by proactively alerting field service teams to avoid truck rolls to new customers who are potentially fraudulent. In addition, the company wanted to attract new customers through improved execution of targeted marketing campaigns.
DIRECTV was challenged to satisfy the changing needs of its customer service agents averaging more than 600,000 customer calls per day, and had to handle large data volumes (10-plus terabytes).
Solution
DIRECTV implemented Oracle GoldenGate to consolidate disparate data marts into a central warehouse, which improved the timeliness, granularity, and accuracy of customer and service data available from its operational Oracle Siebel CRM system.
This solution enabled managers and more than 15,000 call center agents to conduct real-time data queries and analysis throughout the day—using dashboards, e-mail delivery, and end-user reporting tools—eliminating the reliance on outdated weekly or monthly reports.
"By consolidating disparate data marts into a central, real-time data warehouse, we have been able to improve the quality of actionable data available to all decision makers." —Jack Gustafson, Director of Data Warehouse, DIRECTV
The primary benefit of the availability of real-time data using Oracle GoldenGate was decreased customer churn, which enabled agents to identify and rectify customer-related issues (for example, customers planning to switch to competitors). The solution opened access to critical data, such as reports on satellite service, and installation routes to 11 service and installation partners.
“In the fiercely competitive television service industry, customer retention is vital. Having the right information at the right time can make the difference between keeping a customer or letting him or her churn,” said Jack Gustafson, director of data warehousing, DIRECTV. “By consolidating disparate data marts into a central, real-time data warehouse, we have been able to improve the quality of actionable data available to all decision makers—from executives to call center staff.”
DIRECTV also increased the self-service functionality of its business intelligence (BI) system, cutting response times and reducing ongoing BI team requests from 100 to 30 or 40.
The Oracle GoldenGate product solution allows DIRECTV to address its changing requirements and future business opportunities with a scalable data integration platform.
Conclusion
Today, more than 5,000 customers are utilizing Oracle data integration technology products, including Oracle GoldenGate, Oracle Data Integrator Enterprise Edition, and Oracle Data Quality. These products provide a complete, open, and integrated foundation for real-time data warehousing, operational reporting, and BI solutions. Customers include DIRECTV, Overstock.com, J.Crew, Hyundai, Nestle, Ross, Verizon, Sabre Holdings, RIM, Verisign, New York Independent System Operator, and more.
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