Sponsor CONNECTIONS U.S. this June and gain visibility, generate leads, and strategize and network with fellow speakers and attendees.CONNECTIONS Europe is less than a week away!
Parks associates is very excited about the speaker lineup.
Romain Waller, Senior VP, Connect, Technicolor, will present the morning keynote “Reshaping the Digital Home Opportunity with Next Gen Media Devices Delivery” on November 16.
The agenda features speakers from the following companies:
| Accedo Broadband Acetrax ActiveVideo Networks Advanced Digital Broadcast (ADB) Alcatel-Lucent Alticast Bestv Cisco Cloudberry Associates Dell Deutsche Telekom AG Ericsson AB Femto Forum France Telecom-Orange Labs F-Secure Gigle Networks HbbTV HCL America IBM Institut fuer Rundfunktechnik GmbH IP Vision Irdeto Juniper Networks | Latens Systems |
Sponsors are Accedo Broadband, ActiveVideo Networks, Advanced Digital Broadcast (ADB), Gigle Networks, Latens, PacketVideo, ProVision Communications, Radialpoint, Ralink Technology, Virgin Media, and Zeitera.
Visit http://www.connectionseurope.com to register.
Affinegy provides advanced software that makes it simple and secure for consumers to lead a Digital Lifestyle. Our Digital Lifestyle Networking platform allows broadband service and solution providers to deliver a frustration-free experience to their end customers. That dramatically reduces support costs, reduces churn, and increases value-added service revenue opportunities.
Radialpoint and Virgin Media are partnering with Parks Associates as the new Advisory Sponsors for CONNECTIONS Europe Summit 2010.
Packet Video has recently teamed up with Parks Associates to become the newest Silver Level Sponsor for CONNECTIONS US 2011.
Parks Associates welcomes Zeitera, a leader in the market for intelligent content recognition solutions across the broadcast, Internet, and consumer electronics ecosystem, to the newest list of sponsors for the 2010 CONNECTIONS Europe Summit in Amsterdam.
Parks Associates welcome Allegro Software, a global leader in providing Internet Software for Embedded devices, to the newest list of sponsors for the 2011 CONNECTIONS Conference in Santa Clara.
Ralink Technology Corporation is a leading innovator and developer of wireless chipset solutions. Ralink products are recognized for the superior throughput, extended range, low-power consumption and consistent reliability required for Wi-Fi, mobile and embedded applications. These feature-rich chipsets have a high level of chip integration, enabling customers to build smaller and more sophisticated mobile wireless products cost-effectively.
Sonic Solutions is powering the digital media ecosystem through its complete range of Hollywood to Home applications, services, and technologies. Sonic's Roxio products enable consumers to easily manage and enjoy personal media and premium Hollywood entertainment on a broad range of connected devices. A wide array of leading technology firms, professionals, businesses, and developers rely on Sonic to bring innovative digital media functionality to next-generation devices and platforms. Sonic Solutions is headquartered in Marin County, California.
Rovi Corporation is focused on revolutionizing the digital entertainment landscape by delivering solutions that enable consumers to intuitively connect to new entertainment from many sources and locations. The company also provides extensive entertainment discovery solutions for television, movies, music and photos to its customers in the consumer electronics, cable and satellite, entertainment and online distribution markets. These solutions, complemented by industry leading entertainment data, create the connections between people and technology, and enable them to discover and manage entertainment in an enjoyable form.
Parks Associates is proud to welcome AlertMe as a new Bronze sponsor for the 2010 CONNECTIONS Conference.
Walt Disney, a master at building brand loyalty, once offered the following guiding principle: “Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.”
Providing an excellent customer experience will not only encourage your customers to keep coming back; it will enhance your brand’s reputation. In today’s ultra-competitive communications industry, the decisive factor in brand loyalty and reputation is becoming technical support and customer service – and the providers that excel in these areas are positioned to rule the day.
Exponential technological change has profoundly altered the old customer service models for communications service providers. Traditional product sales models have evolved to become ongoing vendor-buyer relationships where post-product support helps determine future brand loyalty and future revenues. While it may be obvious that strong service builds customer loyalty, the power of high-quality digital home support is startling.
A recent Accenture Global Digital Home Consumer Study shows that approximately two-thirds of consumers switched communications providers during the past year. Globally, customer service -- not price -- was the number one reason. Furthermore, 71 percent of respondents agree that experiencing good customer support makes them more likely to buy from the same company in the future. An additional 58 percent say that it makes them more likely to recommend that company to their friends and family.[1]
These same customers are also willing to pay for and reward good service: 69 percent of respondents are willing to pay for technical phone support, while 62 percent said the same for remote monitoring services. The bottom line is that these findings are no surprise when nearly three quarters of retail technology consumers today say they buy based on service quality.
Achieving High Performance in Service
To help position for high performance and success in serving the digital home, communications service providers must develop strategies for how to build and deliver improved technical support to users. Providers can then determine how best to monetize these services and leverage their unique position in the digital home value chain to create distinctive, long-term relationships with their customers.
Successful providers will identify and develop innovative internal and external processes, technologies and standards to create the distinctive capabilities that serve as the building blocks of high performance. Industry leaders will be able to address the following important questions:
• What do customers value? What is the right mix of price versus quality?
• What should your digital home support service offer?
• How should you price the service?
• How should you deliver it? What is the right mix of onsite versus remote delivery?
• What capabilities do you need in terms of people, processes and technology?
• What channels will drive effective and efficient sales and service?
By improving or replacing home technology support services, a provider can reduce costs through fewer minutes, lower repeat rates and call deflection. Through the use of automated tools and some tasks that can be assigned outside of the company, communications providers may achieve substantial savings. In addition, communications service providers that offer cable, phone and Internet can help increase revenues by driving supplemental monthly fees for premium technology support for customers who are willing to pay for a higher level of support.
Accenture research indicates that the industry failure rate for consumer home technology solutions can be as high as 30 percent. With better service comes higher customer retention and brand loyalty in an industry where negative (or positive) experiences stick with consumers and switching costs for the end customer are relatively low.
A Final Thought
Communications and technology companies have drastically reshaped their attitudes toward services. Instead of regarding services as a drag on bottom-line profitability, providers are now rushing to determine how to transform the consumer experience through their service offerings. The providers who innovate in this area are likely to have customers that will “want to see it again and bring their friends.”
Cathy L. Bradley, Managing Director, Customer Contact Business Process Outsourcing Services, Accenture
Gigle Networks provides System-on‐Chip (SoC) integrated circuits and complete system solutions for multimedia home networking that can extend wired and wireless Ethernet everywhere in the home –without the need for new wires. Targeted for applications such as Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), broadband TV (BBTV), video on demand (VoD), and Voice over IP (VoIP), Gigle Networks' products offer superior performance, coverage and quality of service when compared to alternative communication technologies, and are designed to be easily integrated into consumer electronics and networked products. 
Parks Associates welcome Accedo Broadband as a 2010 Advisory Sponsor for CONNECTIONS Europe.
Parks Associates welcomes iTOK as a 2010 Bronze Sponsor for the CONNECTIONS Conference this June in Santa Clara.
Latens is leading the way in IPTV and fully DVB® compliant software Conditional Access and Middleware, enabling operators of broadcast and broadband Pay-TV networks around the world to securely deliver next generation entertainment services to set-top boxes, PCs, mobile devices and home networks. With offices in the US, UK and India Latens’ customer base stretches globally. Latens continued success has been recognised with the recent inclusion in the top 500 Fast Deloitte companies for the EMEA region.Cheetah Cables, an innovation leader in high technology consumer accessories for the gaming, portables and home/office computing markets, announced a technology partnership with PNY Technologies, a global leader in flash memory, USB flash drives, solid state drives, computer memory upgrade modules, as well as consumer and professional graphics cards. Under the strategic partnership, Cheetah Cables and PNY will jointly manufacture and market a line of ultra thin, high performance active HDMI cables under the PNY Technologies brand.
These active HDMI cables have a patented semiconductor technology from RedMere embedded in the cable which minimizes the data errors that usually occur when very high speed signals are transmitted over copper using signal conditioning techniques. The engineering team at Cheetah Cables has delivered a consumer electronics product with significant innovation and market leading performance.
