Avid Adopts ‘New Thinking’ on Products, Customer Service
Streamlines Editing Line, Boosts Online Support
By Glen Dickson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 3/17/2008 2:27:00 PM
Responding to customer feedback, nonlinear-editing and storage supplier Avid Technology announced Monday that it is eliminating its entry-level Xpress Pro editing product, lowering the price of its popular Media Composer system and expanding its online-support capabilities under an initiative it calls “New Thinking.”
“This is an honest and direct effort to improve our value, improve our service and have an open dialogue with our customers,” Avid chief marketing officer Greg Estes said.
The Tewksbury, Mass.-based company -- which surprised many of its broadcast customers when it announced last November that it would not be exhibiting at the National Association of Broadcasters’ show in Las Vegas next month -- will also create an online community that includes a video exchange, blog network and job marketplace in an effort to develop stronger relationships with its customers.
The main impetus behind New Thinking is the complaint from many customers that Avid lost touch with them and their needs -- a point Avid executives acknowledged at the time of the company’s NAB withdrawal.
“We’re going to be much more customer-focused,” Estes said, adding that every top Avid executive has spent time reading a 150-page report full of customer feedback on the company’s products and customer service.
“They really gave it to us loud and clear,” Estes said.
Avid’s first big move is to dispense with its Xpress Pro product, which sold for $1,695, and reduce the price of its Media Composer software by 50% to $2,495. The company will also offer existing Xpress Pro customers a $495 upgrade to Media Composer, while customers who bought Media Composer for $4,995 after Jan. 1 will receive a credit toward future purchases.
“The No. 1 thing we heard from customers was that the editing line was too complex and they don’t understand the role of Xpress Pro,” Estes said.
Avid is also trying to improve its focus on the education market by offering a $295 software version of Media Composer to college students. Increasing its presence in colleges and universities is a strategic imperative for Avid as more and more young editors are initially learning how to use Apple’s Final Cut software instead of Avid systems.
“We want more trained Avid editors on the street,” Estes added.
To improve customer service, particularly for smaller customers who don’t pay for enterprise-level support, Avid retooled its online-customer-support user interface to include improved technical resources and information. The company said its technical experts reviewed and updated more than 10,000 pieces of content before launching the new support Web site.
“Our customers were pretty loud and clear with us that their experience with phone support was decidedly mixed,” Estes said. “It was pretty clear to us that the way to do it better, and do it 24/7, was on the online side, with a faster and better search engine.”
Improvements included a search engine that intelligently ranks and categorizes content using adaptive-search technology and click-tracking studies to monitor the content that users consistently rank as most useful; personalized e-mail notifications on support updates; faster response time on support issues; and an intelligent automated-response system that matches questions with the most relevant published content available.
Avid will still supply telephone support to major broadcast and postproduction customers, Estes said, and it will not reduce its support staff as a result of the online initiative.
Avid’s plans to improve its dialogue with customers are less concrete than price reductions or Web improvements. For now, they consist mainly of a new online community with tips and tricks; blogs; a video exchange where customers can upload work and comment on the work of their peers; community pages; and a job marketplace. Estes said that Avid also plans to stage more intimate customer events that tap industry luminaries, such as award-winning film editors, for their expertise.
As it previously promised, Avid will be in Las Vegas during NAB, just not on the exhibit floor. The company plans several customer events during the show at its traditional off-site venue, the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino.
Estes said the company will also have some broadcast-focused product news to talk about, hinting that new applications for the Mac hardware platform could be in the offing.
Of course, the price reduction for Avid's Media Composer still makes the product almost twice as expensive as Apple’s wildly popular Final Cut Studio. The Apple product, which sells for $1,299, has found increasing traction with broadcast customers despite complaints that consumer-focused Apple doesn’t provide professional-level support to stations and networks.
To that point, Estes said Avid isn’t trying to compete on low-cost editing software alone with Apple, adding that Avid still has an edge in collaborative editing environments with multiple users.
“Our view is that we’re not a one-to-one competitor with Apple in this instance,” he said. “We’re focused on the higher end of collaboration where it is appropriate. As we like to say, Avid is pretty good at 'we,' as in collaboration, while Apple is pretty good at 'I', the single user.”
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