Article

Digital 'wow' factor increases sales, customer satisfaction for Time Warner Cable

How do we develop an inviting and interactive retail environment in the digital age?

November 11, 2014 by Nicole Troxell — Associate Editor, Networld Media Group

How do we develop an inviting and interactive retail environment that provides a positive brand experience in the digital age?

Executives from Time Warner Cable and retail experience firm Reality Interactive looked at this critical issue facing retailers in the seminar "Retail Merchandising in the Digital Age: How to Configure an Interactive Environment" at this year's Customer Engagement World.

Reality Interactive and Time Warner Cable worked together to revamp the cable TV provider's New York City flagship store transforming a bleak, uninviting space into a warm, welcoming place for memorable retail experiences. In the session, Doug Hampton-Dowson, the creative director for Reality Interactive, and Cindy Heitsman, senior director of corporate marketing for Time Warner Cable, took attendees through the transformation process. (This year's Customer Engagement World trade show was held Nov. 5 and 6 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City.)

Before its metamorphosis, Time Warner Cable's store was about as inviting as a trip to the DMV, the pair said. Customers were greeted by rows of plastic chairs and a blank wall with a single flatscreen TV adorning it. Essentially, it was a space.

That's the difference between space and place, Hampton-Dowson said. Spaces are ordinary and functional, like a stairwell for example. Places are where experiences happen and memories are made, he said, like a dining room where friends and family gather to interact with one another. It's interaction that makes experience engaging and memorable, which is what Time Warner and Reality Interactive set out to accomplish in the New York City store.

When creating a "place," mindset matters, they said. It's the difference between "Do we have to be there?" and "Do we want to be there?" So Reality Interactive and Time Warner collaborated with retail designers, digital agencies, brand marketers, queue systems specialists and architects to design an inviting, memorable store that encouraged interaction with technology and customer engagement with products.

The company had the challenge of creating brand awareness about its mobile apps and designing a store that encouraged traffic flow instead of crowding. The store is a full city block long, so the project required investing in a retail network to build a consistent content stream that customized local content.

The Time Warner brand needed to both communicate and sell, so they took the "hit them right when they walk through the door" approach.

Reality Interactive installed a large video wall showcasing interactive product demos, multiple five-screen video walls throughout the store, several 21-inch tablet kiosks equipped for Internet browsing, Intelligent Home Security and Home Management demo kiosks, greeting/check-in kiosks at the front of the store and small signage showcasing relevant offerings.

But they said they needed something to "wow" customers in the middle of the store, a centerpiece that made their experience unforgettable. They tested various ideas: an image of New York's famous Flatiron building blocked the view of the rest of the store, a digital screen screaming "Welcome to Bill Pay" looked too much like a bowling alley, and hanging projection glass couldn't achieve the lighting they wanted and wasn't interactive enough.

The team's strategy was to use digital content to educate customers and grab their attention, especially about Time Warner's mobile apps, which weren't getting the traffic they wanted. It was this strategy that generated a giant 90-inch smartphone featuring a mobile app on a massive interactive touchscreen, the App Station Showpiece. The mobile app piece was so well-received that Time Warner took it to its smaller stores, they said.

"This was an exciting project for us because we could take everything we had learned from the smaller stores over the past year and apply it to this new grand retail environment," Hampton-Dowson said earlier this year when the flagship store transformation was unveiled. "The customer experience was always the central focus for us. We wanted to create the right blend of entertaining, relatable content with just the right amount of brand messaging. Our challenge was to create an environment where customers could experience intangible Time Warner Cable services in a tangible way."

Time Warner is now recognized for some of the best practices in the industry, Heitsman said. The bottom line? People are engaging and interacting, and for Time Warner that's translated into higher conversion rates for customers; wait times are five times shorter, productivity has increased for staff, and ultimately and most importantly customers are satisfied.

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