73% Service Automation and 57% Cost Reduction: Reimagining Customer Support for a Leading U.S. Sports Streaming Service

Client Overview

The client is a prominent sports streaming platform in the United States, boasting a subscriber base exceeding 25 million. As part of a major global entertainment conglomerate, the service offers live and on-demand sports content, catering to a vast audience of passionate fans nationwide.

The Challenge

Navigating Service Demands in a High-Stakes, Event-Driven Environment

As a premier destination for live sports content, the client faced intense pressure to deliver flawless customer support during nationally televised games and high-profile events. Subscriber engagement would surge unpredictably, generating a flood of customer support inquiries ranging from login issues and buffering concerns to subscription management and device troubleshooting.

The existing support infrastructure, heavily reliant on human agents, was not equipped to scale dynamically. This resulted in increased wait times, inconsistent support quality, and missed opportunities to create seamless experiences for passionate sports fans. Additionally, the reactive model led to spiraling operational costs during peak seasons, threatening profitability and long-term scalability. To sustain the momentum of subscriber growth and protect brand reputation, the client needed a highly agile, intelligent, and efficient support system that could anticipate and absorb volume spikes without compromising customer satisfaction or cost control.

Sutherland Solution

Designing a Scalable, AI-Driven Support Ecosystem for the Streaming Age

Sutherland collaborated closely with the client to architect a next-generation customer care strategy, combining intelligent automation, behavioral insight, and scalable digital design. Our solution included three core components:

1. Human-Centered Design Interventions: Through our Insight & Design Labs, we conducted an in-depth analysis of user pain points and designed intuitive, self-service video guides. These helped users troubleshoot common technical issues independently, reducing inbound support demand and empowering customers with quick resolutions.
   
2. Deployment of ‘Turbo’ – Elastic Conversational AI: We engineered and launched a conversational AI assistant, ‘Turbo,’ designed to reflect the client’s brand voice while delivering human-like interactions. Turbo was built with natural language understanding and elastic scalability, capable of handling dramatic spikes in interaction volumes during major events. The bot was trained to resolve a wide range of complex issues, minimizing escalations and maintaining consistency across all customer touchpoints.
   
3. Intelligent Automation and Advanced Analytics Integration: We embedded cognitive automation and AI capabilities – backed by over 200 patents – to proactively surface insights, personalize support experiences, and dynamically adapt interaction flows. This enabled the client to not only respond to issues faster but also to continuously optimize support workflows based on real-time behavior patterns and demand signals.

This future-ready support architecture aligned with the client’s brand promise and ensured they could deliver exceptional service at the pace and scale of live sports broadcasting.

The Outcome

Transforming Customer Care into a Scalable Growth Engine

The transformation initiative delivered both immediate and sustainable impact. Sutherland’s AI-led support ecosystem automated 73% of all customer interactions, significantly reducing the dependency on live agents and enabling the client to scale effortlessly during volume surges. Chat support volumes dropped by 60%, reflecting the success of proactive self-service solutions and intelligent deflection strategies. Most notably, the total cost of customer support operations was reduced by 57%, turning customer care from a reactive cost center into a strategic asset.

The solution not only mitigated service disruption risks during live events but also elevated the brand experience for millions of sports fans. By enabling responsive, reliable, and on-brand support across channels, Sutherland empowered the client to uphold its leadership in the hyper-competitive streaming market, where every customer moment counts.

That’s digital outcomes delivered!