Spark Sport in-home visits and care measures assist Kiwis

Wednesday 9 October

Spark Sport in-home visits and care measures assist New Zealanders into streaming

RWC Tournament Pass numbers revealed

As announced last week, Spark Sport has brought in additional customer care measures to help ensure more customers are having a better Rugby World Cup viewing experience.

As of yesterday, the Spark Sport team has identified a total of 309 customers with hard to resolve streaming issues who we have earmarked for a free-of-charge home visit to assess their in-home technology setup. Of these, home visits have been completed or booked for 100 customers, with a further 131 visits pending once a suitable time is confirmed with the customer (the remaining customers have either told us they have since resolved their issue or have declined home support).

In the home visits completed to date, our Spark Sport technicians have been able to identify the root cause of the customer’s streaming issues and, in almost all cases, our technicians have assisted the customer with in-home setup or device improvements and have walked out the door with the customer now having a good streaming experience.

Additionally, in cases where customers have contacted the Spark Sport Care team with issues and we have determined it would likely be helpful to their particular issue, we have been offering to send them a complimentary Freeview SmartVU device as an alternative way to watch. As of yesterday, 198 customers have taken up this offer.

Head of Spark Sport, Jeff Latch, says that since the tournament began, there has been a significant and steady decline in customers needing assistance: “The number of customers engaging via our Care channels declined almost 80% between the first and second weekends, and fell a further 27% last weekend. Furthermore, 86% of customers receiving care have only contacted Spark Sport once during the tournament, indicating that we’ve been able to promptly assist the large majority of customers.

“The best solution for each customer depends on a wide range of factors including their broadband connection, their in-home connectivity (WiFi proximity and location, etc), and the devices they are using to stream matches. Our in-home technicians have found that for the most part, issues have been related to in-home technology or device setup (such as WiFi quality and/or configuration).

“We’re pleased we have been able to help many customers achieve a much better viewing experience. That said, we acknowledge some customers are still having issues and we understand their frustrations in wanting to have a better viewing experience for such an important tournament to all rugby fans. We strongly encourage customers who may still have issues to get in touch with us so we can help them,” says Latch.

Tournament Pass numbers

There are now over 186,000 Spark Sport Rugby World Cup Tournament Pass subscriptions. The number of Tournament Pass holders has continued to grow throughout the tournament, with new subscriptions outweighing cancellations by a ratio of four to one since the New Zealand vs South Africa game on match day two.

Latch says the Tournament Pass number is in line with Spark’s internal projections and indicates that live streaming is being embraced by more New Zealanders, which is encouraging for the broader shift towards live streamed sports viewing.

“Having said that, we recognise the frustration of those viewers who have not found it easy to make the transition to live streaming and we’re committed to helping those customers as best we can.”

ENDS

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