The Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing signed a three-year deal with data analytics provider TargusInfo to power the Cable Mover Hotline, which refers cable customers who are moving to the operator at their new address.
The CTAM hotline, established in 2003, uses CableLabs' Go2Broadband service locator in conjunction with TargusInfo's consumer-information database.
The service -- available at 877-9TV-MOVE and www.cablemovershotline.com -- received 1.77 million calls in 2008. The hotline is used by the 18 largest cable companies in the U.S., including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Cablevision Systems, serving approximately 121 million homes.
TargusInfo CEO George Moore estimated that about 20 million households move every year. "This keeps those customers in the cable club," he said.
The Vienna, Va.-based vendor is providing a "soup-to-nuts" implementation that identifies the provider at the new address and provides the call transfer, Moore said.
Moore said TargusInfo signed the deal with CTAM in December and the
system went live in February. Under the terms of the deal, TargusInfo is paid based on number of minutes the platform is used.
Separate from CTAM's Cable Mover Hotline, TargusInfo provides the ability for MSOs to use various data, such as estimated household income and property value, to quantify a prospect. "We can pinpoint if you're a $200 triple-play prospect versus a $10 basic cable sub," Moore said. That lets cable operators, for example, route higher-value consumers to their more highly trained "platinum" sales agents and lower-value subs to the "trainee" team, he added.
Privately held TargusInfo says that nine of the 10 biggest U.S. cable operators are its customers.
