Posts Tagged ‘Channel Lineup’

NEW Customer Home Page Coming July 28th!

In: Education

By: Barbara Kubereit on Jul 02, 2010 at 10:59 am

WOW! is going to be unveiling  the next generation of our customer portal home page on July 28th.  The updated portal has a more modern, cleaner look and is changing from vertical navigation to horizontal, making it easier to get around.   The new portal can be customized and personalized to suit your tastes and watching your favorite shows and missed episodes are just a click away from hulu.com.  For those who love games, click to over 100 new free online games.

More content, easier navigation, new design.  We think you’re going to love it.  Check it out.  Take the Tour.  http://content.wowway.com/WowPortalTour/index.html

0
VN:F [1.7.4_987]

Rate Me

Rating: 2.8/5 (6 votes cast)

Tags

, , ,

A Day in the Life of a WOW! Customer

In: Education

By: Steve Zeiden on May 13, 2010 at 4:00 am

In our ongoing series of “A Day in the Life”, I thought today’s article would be a good one based off you, our customer.  Now you may be saying, “How does he know what my day is like?”  Well, truthfully, I don’t.  But here at WOW!, we do know that most people’s days are busy between work and errands and home life of chores and cooking dinner and paying bills and then relaxing a bit to watch that comedy you recorded on your WOW! DVR before bedtime…. well, you get the idea!
Because everyone’s life is so busy, I want to make sure you are aware of the easy solutions and customer education tools at your access.

Channel lineups – It’s prime-time and you can’t remember what channel Food Network is on and you can’t find your WOW! channel lineup that was given to you at installation.  No problem!  We have our channel lineups for each of our areas online – just click here to be taken to our channel lineup page on our website.  From there, choose your region and you’re all set. You can even print out a copy to keep next to your remote control.

Frequently Asked Questions and Troubleshooting – You keep wondering “What happens if the power goes out – are the shows on my DVR gone?!”  To save you time and not have to place a call to us to find out, we have tons of FAQs on our website to help you with WOW! Internet, WOW! Cable and WOW! Phone.  We also have the top troubleshooting tips for your WOW! Internet, WOW! Cable and WOW! Phone service.  (And not to worry, if the power goes out, you will only miss the recordings that were scheduled to be recorded while the power was out. Your previously recorded shows will still be there!  But keep in mind that the Interactive Guide information will need some time to repopulate.)

WOW! Reference Guide -   When you are first installed with WOW!, our technician leaves behind a WOW! Reference Guide for you containing  information on how to use and troubleshoot WOW! services, information on Parental Controls,  use your DVR, how to use your WOW! email, how to use your WOW! Phone features and more.   If you can’t find your copy of your reference guide – no problem.  We have it all online for you. Just click here to be taken to our online reference guides.

WOW! Customer Home Page – It’s late at night and you finally have the kids to bed, the dishwasher has been loaded and started, the laundry’s in the dryer and the dog’s been taken for his walk.  Now you have some time to go through your home office chores.  But darn, you’re out of stamps and your WOW! bill is due soon and won’t make it in time.  What do to?  Easy solution.  Your WOW! Customer Home Page is your gateway to access the WOW! Online Account Manager. This is your one stop shop to help you manage your WOW! account including your WOW! A Friend referrals.    Online Account Manager lets you pay your bill online (no more stamps!), review billing statements, and if you are a WOW! Phone customer, you can also view your call detail records. And if your child has been constantly asking to set up an email address for them, this is the place to add additional email accounts as well as lets you change your user name and password.  From the WOW! Customer Home Page, just log in and then click on “Account Manager” link at the top of the page.  Not registered yet on the WOW! Customer Home Page?  No problem – registration takes just a few minutes.  To register, you will  need your 16 digit WOW! account number (located at the top of your WOW! statement) and the phone number associated with your account.

Call us! Of course, if you’d rather get information over the phone, we’re always here for you. Anytime day or night.  Weekends.  Holidays.   We offer 24/7 Customer Care Support at 1-866-496-9669 (that’s 1-866-4-WOW-NOW) .  Through our customer care line, we also offer some automated services so you can even pay your WOW! bill over the phone, check on an appointment, and order a pay-per-view event.

I hope these tools will help make your life easier and provided some additional knowledge for you on the tools we have to help you.

Thanks for reading and for being a WOW! customer.

0
VN:F [1.7.4_987]

Rate Me

Rating: 4.0/5 (2 votes cast)

Tags

, , ,

How Programming Decisions Are Made

In: Customer Experience & Support

By: Cathy Kuo on Mar 04, 2010 at 8:44 am

One of the most challenging things we do at WOW! is to decide what channels to offer customers.  Often we receive requests to add certain channels and questions as to why others aren’t available or have been dropped or put into a different package. There are a number of factors we take into consideration – what physical capacity is available; which channels have the greatest overall customer demand; how much the programmer or network is demanding in license fees. We know our choices won’t always be popular. But we hope you understand that we strive to make decisions that we truly believe are responsive to the programming and pricing needs and desires of all our customers.
In order to air the television channels you enjoy, we have to have the necessary physical capacity – or bandwidth – to distribute them.  Much like any retail store, we have a finite amount of shelf space available.  Most of it is already occupied by the current channel line-up. And so there is a limited amount of bandwidth available at any given time. We continually look for ways to remove channels with low performance or at least move them to a more appropriate package so that we can free up capacity to add the programming that customers actually want.
So when we have available bandwidth, how do we decide which networks to consider? First we take a look at customer feedback. We have a channel request form on our website from which we track and monitor what our customers are asking for. We also look at the Nielsen ratings to understand viewership of the various channels in each of our markets. Feedback from our Regional GMs, our technicians and customer care representatives who speak with customers every day is also taken into consideration. Our goal is to satisfy as many customers as we possibly can with our programming decisions. So armed with that information, we prioritize which networks we think would best meet the needs of our broad and diverse customer base.
Finally, we engage in programming negotiations with the network to try and reach business terms that make sense for our customers and our company.  We negotiate to renew carriage of existing channels as well as launching new ones. Sometimes a reasonable outcome is reached. But more often than not these days, negotiations seem to become more and more contentious. The larger media companies are demanding significant increases and threatening to pull their signals unless operators like WOW! succumb. Or they require carriage of channels with little customer demand in exchange for the right to continue distributing their higher rated channels. And as for HD, there’s an alarming trend towards “launch one, launch many” where programmers will allow operators to carry the HD feed of a highly desirable channel –but only if we agree to carry the HD feeds of many of their less desirable channels as well.
What does all of this mean? Here’s the bottom line. We accept that programming expenses increase every year. We don’t like it, but we get that everyone has a business to run – as do we. So as channel changes are evaluated, we’ll continue to fight hard for business terms that are fair and reasonable. There are many worthy channels we carry or would like to carry, but they’re not worth carrying at any price.

9
VN:F [1.7.4_987]

Rate Me

Rating: 3.7/5 (35 votes cast)

Tags

, , , , ,

The WOW! Customer Home Page

In: Education

By: Ray Rouleau on Feb 05, 2010 at 7:00 am

The WOW! Customer Home Page is your one-stop page for all your online needs. Besides easy access to your email and WOW! account management, you can also check the weather, your WOW! TV listings or even watch online video all from the WOW! Customer Home Page.

You can easily customize your page by selecting the add content button in the top right corner of the page. There are numerous categories to choose from like Business, Entertainment, News, and Sports. You can also choose what column to add the content too and the content can be dragged up or down within column so you can put your favorite information where you want it.

Checking email couldn’t be easier either. While logged in to your customer homepage you can see the 3 newest messages that are in your inbox and you can use the quick compose tab to send an email without opening the full email window. Do you need a break from email? Why not try the Games channel and try your hand at some mini golf or maybe a game of Bejeweled 2.

Still not convinced?  Take a tour now to see for yourself here. So with all these nice features, why not try the WOW! Customer Hompage today?

0
VN:F [1.7.4_987]

Rate Me

Rating: 3.5/5 (11 votes cast)

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,