The increased spending on customer service comes as Hulu is about to go head-to-head with internet channels that offer live TV from AT&T's DirecTVNow and Dish Network Corp's Sling TV.
The services have had hiccups - like shows freezing, viewers getting error messages and system crashes. Their owners also have large customer service staffs already handling calls from their traditional pay TV customers, said Brett Sappington, senior director of research at Parks Associates.
The stakes are high for Hulu, which has a customer defection rate of 50 percent, according to Parks Associates, a Dallas-based market research firm.
"Live TV is a challenge particularly for events like the Super Bowl and the Oscars which draw millions of subscribers all at the same time," Sappington said. "You are never sure what's going to break until you have a few million people watching at the same time."
From the article "Hulu to launch non-stop customer service as it readies live TV".
The U.S. tech support sector is worth about $30 billion annually, according Reuters citing research by Parks Associates. HelloTech’s competition includes the Geek Squad, which is run by electronics re...
Partnering with British-based telecom Vodafone, which claims 400 million subscribers in 30 countries globally, including 1 million TV subs in Spain, affords HBO an existing distribution channel. Spain...
Parks said nearly 60% of OTT video services in North America are subscription-based. About 64% of U.S. broadband households subscribe to an OTT video service, up from 59% in 2015. Average monthly spen...
“Online giants have the scale and technology to take risks in new areas of innovation,” said Brett Sappington, senior research director, Parks Associates. “In some cases, these innovations are transfo...
