Capita, the private company contracted by the BBC to run and enforce the controversial TV License system, will soon be using “customer behavioural insight” as it adopts a host of new software packages for its databases in July, according to a Press Release issued this week.
Renowned for its door to door harassment of citizens and threatening legal style letters, Capita have selected Pitney Bowes Software to provide “location intelligence and analytics solutions,” to more effectively get people to pay for a license. Capita will “re-engineer the current service delivery model and aims to harness advances in technology and analytics to increase the TV Licensing revenues collected, while also reducing the current servicing costs.”
Capita has chosen a number of software solutions: MapInfo Pro, MapInfo Spatial Server, Portrait Explorer and Portrait Miner to deliver three key benefits:
– Understanding and targeting the right customers with the most appropriate payment plans through more relevant, engaging and timely communications.
– Through propensity modeling, to target customers most likely to switch channel to web self-service.
– Optimising field service operations through the use of location intelligence and customer behavioural insight, to develop routing and visit prioritization.
In action this will likely mean warning letters are issued quicker, tailor made advertising gumph sent to those based on age/location and other info, and the targeting of those deemed more vulnerable or likely to crack under enforcement visits.
Regardless of whether you have or don’t have a TV, or have and don’t have a TV License, UK citizens aren’t obliged under any law to engage or divulge any information to the BBC or Capita, and are not required to allow enforcement officers entry in to a property regardless of what they claim at the doorstep. If you do not wish to be hassled, the time tested method is to simply ignore the doorbell and bin the letters.
