Sparklight, a market service provider in the midwest, and Hargray Communications, based in the southeast, are part of the Cable One family of brands, serving more than 1 million residential and business customers in 24 states.

Tele-Town Hall set out to test the use of peer-to-peer text messaging, utilizing a text message survey that doubled as a win-back program for recently disconnected subscribers. 

This was done using an SMS/MMS agent assisted, automated survey. It consisted of four questions and a request for comments, with a focus on affordability, reliability, speed and if they would consider coming back. The final request was to return any comments that would better assist in serving customers in the future. 

The pilot program for this was tested over a three month period in three geographic markets, consisting of the highly competitive south and southeast areas, as well as a few choice markets in the midwest. 

The survey was sent to subscribers that disconnected service 30 to 45 days prior, with two variations of the survey used to maximize the return on the third month of the test. Using a scale from 1 – 5, participants were asked to respond accordingly, allowing for standard survey reporting and a Net Promoter Score to be calculated. 

The initial message included the length of the survey, the purpose of the survey, option to opt-out, and the company’s branded logo for identification. 

Through all of this, the only time agent intervention was required in the peer-to-peer portal was if an unexpected response didn’t trigger the auto-response features.

Results

It’s no surprise that 93% of subscribers had their mobile phone as a point of contact, the other 7% being identified as landlines. This allowed for a successful delivery of 91% of initial messages, 11% response to the first question and an overall 7% completion rate. 

Throughout all of this, the survey was able to identify up to 42% of the subscribers that completed the survey would consider coming back.

A final tally is still being conducted as of January 2023 to determine the number of re-captured subscribers, as well as the total ROI (Value of Subscriber (X) Total Re-Captured Subs / Cost of Program)

As of now, initial results are incredibly promising and show how effective text surveys can be at reaching out to not only customers, but decreasing overall attrition rate.