Time Warner Cable Connects With Customers

New York — Consumers visiting the Time Warner Cable flagship store in Manhattan (and more than 20 other new locations nationally) are now able to do more than simply stand in line to pay their monthly Internet and cable bills. The company has worked with Minneapolis-based brand marketing agency Fame over the last two years to transform its payment centers into “experience stores” that provide customers with interactive encounters in an inviting and modern in-store environment.“The flagship is a technology-driven space that features a fully immersive environment designed to enhance our customer experience,” says Tom Crowell, vice president of retail sales and development, Time Warner Cable (TWC). “Comfortable seating areas throughout give customers a place to lounge but also the ability to engage and learn about new products and apps. It gives our customers the opportunity to experience the products first-hand since many aren’t aware of the features available to them.”While customer service reps and cable boxes previously stood behind tall counters, the flagship store and its updated prototypes now have a wide-open floor plan set up in a stylish living area adorned with a digital fireplace. The store is a fully connected space with charging stations and free Wi-Fi that also enables the brand to showcase its lesser-known retail products.For example, TWC’s IntelligentHome security and home management services are featured with the help of large TVs, touchscreen monitors, hands-on demo stations and an enormous 90-inch tablet simulating a mobile device. “Customers still come in to pay their bills or exchange equipment,” Crowell says, “but we are getting more people in the door who just want to learn something new about Time Warner Cable products and services.”Lynne Robertson, president and CEO of Fame, points out that most cable company customer centers tend to have “dreary” environments with less-than-inviting features such as bulletproof glass. “[TWC] saw an opportunity for customers to engage at a deeper level,” she says.“[TWC] realized, ‘Wait, we’ve got this audience streaming in every day to our location, so we should be talking to them and improving our brand experience with them,’” says Bruce Edwards, Fame’s chief creative officer and executive vice president. “At times, a customer service rep could step into that middle space and engage with the products, point out some features and explain how to access some of that information.”Robertson says there was one overriding challenge to the project that TWC and Fame noticed right away and addressed quickly. “Customers didn’t want to lose their place in line,” she says. “It’s kind of a human nature thing – ‘I’m here to make a deal.’ So we developed a digital queuing system with a greeter station. Then, once they felt comfortable that they were checked in and going to be catered to on a timely basis,” customers were much more willing to utilize the interactive demos and engage with in-store devices.TWC and Fame have observed stores both pre- and post-transformation to get a sense of shoppers’ expectations, their levels of engagement and the redesign’s overall effect on brand perception, Crowell says. “We’re going back into the flagship to measure and analyze the store through shopalongs, qualitative and quantitative customer intercepts and interviews, and interviews with associates.”What they have found so far is that the overall initial performance of the revamped stores is exceeding TWC expectations from a sales and brand-impression standpoint. Store upgrades have cut customer wait time from 20 to four minutes on average. TWC plans to roll out refreshed prototypes based on the flagship design to hundreds more stores across its 29-state footprint, including nine more stores this year.To drive customers along the path to purchase, the flagship store’s grand opening in mid-March was promoted on social media and company blogs, and TWC.com has a store locator tool that notes which stores provide a “Demo Center” with engagement opportunities.The project zoomed from initial designs in the summer of 2013 to a “soft opening” in February 2014, Crowell says. In addition to Fame handling overall strategy and design, TWC relied upon Reality Interactive, Middletown, Conn., for digital content design and strategy, and Going Sign & Servicing Co., Plainview, N.Y., for signage and graphics. Several vendors handled the architecture and construction.“They were really committed to awakening this retail channel,” Edwards says of TWC.

Time Warner Cable Connects With Customers

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