JULY - SEPT 2022Media & Entertainment Business Review8Think back to an evening in 2003 spent in front of the TV. Perhaps Jeff Probst was saying, "The tribe has spoken," on "Survivor," or Gil Grissom was pulling together forensic evidence on "CSI." "Friends" was still somewhere in the line-up, too, and Netflix was shelling out physical DVDs alongside Blockbuster, with its switch to streaming services still four distant years away. As a cable provider, your biggest worry was a prime-time outage and a group of angry customers who missed tribal council or the close of the case. Those providers have evolved into full-stack data services providers with quite a few more responsibilities ­ and higher customer support expectations to boot. Just as the entertainment landscape has evolved, so too has consumption of entertainment to encompass a more robust and technologically advanced set-up that requires multiple devices and services. While high-speed internet used to be a luxury for early-adopters of video streaming and workaholics, today broadband and in-home Wi Fi is the lifeblood of our work, education, entertainment and connection.Any downtime in the internet, streaming, phone or cloud services that power people's everyday lives is deeply disruptive.Right along with the technology advancements, the ways in which service providers deliver the customer experience have grown exponentially. Take the pandemic for one, which THE EVOLUTION OF SERVICE PROVIDERCUSTOMER SERVICEBy Tom White, Chief Technology Officer, Consolidated CommunicationsTom WhiteIN MYOPINION
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