TV Weekly Customer Service: Expert Playbook for Subscriber Support

Contents

1 TV Weekly Customer Service: Expert Playbook for Subscriber Support

TV Weekly customer service is the operational heart of any weekly TV listings product—print, digital or hybrid—and must be built for a 7‑day cadence, rapid content changes and recurring billing. This playbook distills practical, measurable procedures used by experienced customer‑service managers in media operations from 2018–2025 and prescribes concrete targets, staffing formulas and policies you can implement immediately.

Below you will find specific KPIs, scripts for troubleshooting, staffing examples with math, pricing and refund policies, addresses and sample contact points you can adapt. The recommendations assume a mid‑sized title with 50,000 paying subscribers but include calculation mechanics so you can scale up or down precisely.

Scope, Channels and Weekly Cadence

Typical TV Weekly service supports three subscriber types: print only, digital only and print+digital. Channel mix in 2024 industry averages for weekly titles was roughly 40% phone, 30% email/ticketing, 20% chat, 10% social/self‑service. Peak contact volumes usually occur on release day (Thursday in many markets) and during billing runs (1st and 15th of month). Expect a 0.5–2.5% weekly contact rate: with 50,000 subscribers that equates to 250–1,250 contacts per week.

Operational hours commonly span 7:00–22:00 ET, Mon–Sun for digital-first products; print‑centric operations often use 6:00–18:00 ET, Mon–Fri. Standard customer contact channels to publish: Phone (1-800-555-0199), Email ([email protected]), Web support portal (https://support.tvweekly.example) and USPS returns: TV Weekly Returns, 120 Media Lane, Suite 400, Burbank, CA 91502. Use toll‑free numbers and a central ticketing domain to ensure consistent routing and analytics.

KPIs, Benchmarks and Staffing Formula

Operational targets you should set immediately: Service Level (SL): 90% of calls answered within 30 seconds; Average Handle Time (AHT): 6–9 minutes for billing/fulfillment, 9–14 minutes for technical streaming issues; First Contact Resolution (FCR) target: 82% or higher; CSAT target: ≥4.2/5 (84%); Net Promoter Score (NPS) target: 25–45 for media companies. Abandonment rate should be <5% during normal hours; <10% under peak load.

Staffing formula (example). If you have 50,000 subscribers and a 1% weekly contact rate → 500 contacts/week. If 65% are phone contacts → 325 calls/week. With AHT 8 minutes (0.1333 hours), weekly agent hours = 325 × 0.1333 = 43.33 hours. Assuming 40 productive hours/week per agent and 25% shrinkage (breaks, training, admin), required agents ≈ (43.33 / (40 × 0.75)) ≈ 1.45 → round up to 2 agents for baseline coverage plus 1–2 extra for peak/backup. Scale proportionally for other volumes; use Erlang C for more precise forecasting at high volumes.

Operations, Workflow and SLA Policies

Design a ticket lifecycle: Open → Validate (collect subscriber ID, billing status, last issue date) → Resolve or Escalate → Close with CSAT survey. SLA rules: Email/ticket first response within 8 business hours (24 hours maximum); chat instantaneous with target first reply <60 seconds; phone SLA per above. For refunds, set a 30‑day money‑back policy and automated refund approval thresholds (e.g., refunds < $25 auto‑approve; > $25 require supervisor sign‑off within 2 business days).

Pricing and billing policies to publish: digital weekly subscription $4.99/month, print+digital $7.99/month, annual digital $49.99 (best value). Billing cadence: monthly recurring by default; annual and gift subscriptions available. Lost issue policy: reship within 10 business days at no charge; replacement print issues shipped via USPS Priority Mail at our expense for U.S. addresses. For international shipping add $3.95 per reshipment.

Technical Support for Apps and E‑Paper

Common technical issues for TV Weekly digital editions: login/authentication failures (42% of tech tickets), missing issues after update (21%), app crashes on specific OS builds (18%). Collect: device type, OS version, app version, screenshot or video of error, subscriber ID and timestamp. Standard triage steps: (1) verify account status and subscription expiry, (2) confirm app version and clear cache, (3) force update or reinstall, (4) escalate to engineering with logs if reproducible. Typical first‑line resolution rate for basic steps is 58–70% within 48 hours.

Minimum supported platforms (example policy): iOS 14+, Android 9+, Windows 10+ for desktop e‑paper. If a device falls below minimum, offer graceful fallback: web reader at https://reader.tvweekly.example. Track bug tickets with priority levels: P1 (service down) response within 1 hour, P2 (impacting many users) within 4 hours, P3 within 24 hours. Communicate transparently with subscribers: expected resolution timelines reduce repeat contacts by ~30%.

Essential Data to Collect on Every Contact

Subscriber ID (or email) and full name — required for ticket linkage and PCI compliance.

Billing zip, last 4 digits of card, subscription plan and renewal date — required for refunds/changes.

Issue type (billing, delivery, technical, cancellation), affected issue date(s) or issue number, screenshots/logs for technical cases.

Preferred resolution (refund, reship, credit, technical fix) and contact permission (SMS/email) for follow‑up.

Agent notes with exact timestamps, promise‑to‑customer and SLA deadline — used for escalation and QA.

Quality Assurance, Training and Escalation

QA rubric example (scores out of 100): Accuracy 30 points, Compliance & Security 25 points, Tone & Empathy 20 points, Efficiency (timely resolution) 15 points, Documentation 10 points. Monthly QA target: average score ≥85 and no more than 5% of calls flagged for compliance breaches. Use a calibration meeting weekly (30–45 minutes) to review 10 calls across agents and align scoring.

Escalation matrix (example): Level 1 (agent) resolve within 24 hours; Level 2 (supervisor) escalate if unresolved after 24 hours or if refund > $25; Level 3 (operations manager) for repeated delivery failures (>3 incidents in 30 days) or P1 technical outages. Escalation contact chain: Supervisor ([email protected]), Ops Manager ([email protected]), Technical Lead ([email protected]). Document SLA breach remediation and record remediation time to trend improvements (goal: reduce SLA breaches by 50% in 6 months).