Amdocs, a provider of customer experience solutions, recently released research showing how consumer attitudes have evolved as pay TV continues to face challenges from over the top (OTT) services. 4,000 pay TV customers were polled between January and March 2015.
According to the research, pay TV continues to outperform OTT in terms of content, customer service, and video quality. OTT received higher ratings in terms of recommendations, content availability across multiple devices, UI, and of course, price.
While companies like Comcast and Time Warner are often maligned for their customer service, 93% of respondents preferred the customer service experience with their pay TV providers to their OTT providers.
Still, the study found that 23% of U.S. and Canadian consumers who subscribe to both pay TV and OTT providers are considering canceling or reducing the amount they spend on pay TV services.
“Consumers are interested in getting traditional and OTT services in a combined offering – as shown by the key finding that a majority (51 percent) of consumers in the U.S. and Canada who are thinking about reducing or canceling their pay TV subscriptions would actually keep it going if their pay TV provider offered a single source to search, discover, and watch all of their content, including OTT content,”said Nizar Assanie of IE Market Research, the company that carried out the study for Amdocs.
Data privacy continues to be a widely debated topic, but consumers seemed to favor the personalized recommendations they received through their OTT services. 86% of respondents said that they would allow their pay TV provider to collect usage data from them in order to be able to provide the same quality of recommendations.
