aha delivers uninterrupted service to 20 million movie lovers with Salesforce

India’s over-the-top (OTT) platforms  are  expected to be an astounding $13 billion–$15 billion market in the next decade, thanks to increasing accessibility of streaming devices, the production of original content, and low-price subscription models. The share of regional language consumption alone is expected to cross 50% of all content consumed by 2025.

aha, a forerunner, has leveraged this demand to launch an exclusive Telugu streaming platform called aha. Today, aha is one of the fast-growing OTT platforms in India, with more than 20 million downloads.

“At Arha, we are constantly striving to offer a better experience to our customers. We recently launched aha 2.0 with a refreshed user experience that offers multiple pricing plans, language selections to stream Tamil and Telugu content, personalised recommendations, and more, to engage users on the platform,” says Dilip Chandra, VP - Product & Analytics, aha (Arha Media and Broadcasting Pvt Ltd).

For aha, a key aspect of that customer experience is to offer fast service, whether by onboarding customers quickly and easily, or resolving queries efficiently - all so there is no interruption in their entertainment. To enable this, aha wanted one unified system that could bring together various functions.

“We wanted a solution that would help manage subscriptions easily, resolve cases smartly, and give us a 360-degree view of the customer,” says Ajit Thakur, CEO, aha. Such a solution, by unifying both customer and business data on one platform, would enable aha to provide timely, high-quality experiences to users.

Today, aha uses Salesforce to monitor and manage customer journeys from start to finish. The solution helps them streamline leads, and resolve customer support cases.

Leads are consolidated on Salesforce Sales Cloud and assigned to the right team for follow-up. Sales teams, divided into ‘retention’ and ‘new sales’, run campaigns to nurture prospects, and drive conversions and upsell. A unified view of the customer helps the sales team closely watch customer activities to identify pain points.

“For example, if a user – especially those coming from Tier2 and Tier3 regions – has attempted to pay for a subscription but faced an issue during payment, our sales team proactively reaches out to them to help them try other methods to complete the transaction,” says Chandra.

Finally, with full visibility into the sales pipeline and customer journey, teams can meet their daily sales targets.

The aha service team uses Salesforce Service Cloud to streamline and resolve customer cases faster. Customers reach out to the brand through multiple touchpoints like email, chat, and phone, and their cases are all consolidated on one platform. With this single omnichannel view of customer data, agents can provide consistent and timely help.

For instance, when the company migrated to aha 2.0, they saw close to two lakh queries within two weeks. Despite a huge increase in the volume of customers and queries, a small team of 50 agents was able to effectively process all queries on time.

“We use the power of technology to streamline, route, and escalate cases with ease – this also leads to faster resolution,” says Chandra. Today, the team of 50 agents handles more than 5000 queries a day. And agents are able to resolve customer queries within two and a half to five minutes on chat and call, and within 15 minutes on email, a TAT that will reduce further.

Chandra adds: “Feedback on our service from users has also helped us improve our processes.”

"The implementation of Salesforce during the aha 2.0 migration was seamless thanks to the support of the Salesforce functional team, and implementation partner Mannya Techno Solutions,” says Chandra.

aha also uses Salesforce chatbots for faster case resolution. When a user raises a query on the aha website or app, chatbots engage with them to swiftly respond to and resolve these. Only the more complex cases are transferred to live agents to solve.

For instance, chatbots help resolve queries related to new features and updates so that users can get instant support and watch their favourite content without disruption.

“Implementing chatbots in customer service can be tricky; users sometimes don’t like to be engaged by a robot,” points out Chandra. “However, Salesforce service chatbots are conversational and relevant, helping us resolve close to 60% of incoming queries.

“We only route queries to live agents when chatbots are unable to resolve them. This helps reduce customer frustration and makes our service teams more productive.”

With the rich dashboards and custom reports available on Salesforce, the leadership team can continuously evaluate service performance. Reports capture the number and nature of queries, escalation metrics, agent performance, and response times. “These reports help us maintain superior engagement with our customers,” says Chandra.

To provide holistic customer experiences, aha wants to extend Salesforce’s deployment to even more customer touchpoints. For instance, the company intends to integrate its IVR with Salesforce and speed up call support.

“We are also keen to explore Social Studio to engage and support our users on social media platforms,” says Chandra.

As for aha’s vision for the future, the company, true to its innovative spirit, wants to explore AI-enabled solutions to understand user behaviour and drive personalised experiences. “All in all, we want to be the number one OTT platform for regional content in India. To be a number one brand, you need to provide a stellar experience, and that’s what Salesforce enables us to do,” concludes Chandra.