We recently joined Time Warner Cable at the Grand Opening of the store in Astoria, New York City and spoke to Cindy Heitsman, Senior Marketing Director, Time Warner Cable
about the launch and what’s on the horizon for Time Warner Cable.
Can you tell us a little more about the launch today?
We are here in Astoria – a great neighborhood in New York City, and today we are here celebrating our 39th Transformed Store Grand Opening so this is a big day for us.
I believe this is our sixth store in NYC that we’ve transformed and it has just been an amazing experience for us to be able to help our customers enjoy our products, get better service and really see what Time Warner Cable is all about and what’s new.
The stores themselves are all designed with very high tech demonstrations that allow our customers to touch and feel our products and services and really understand how they can better use them so when they get home they feel more comfortable with them. We’re really focused on providing better customer service to our customers and I think that this store – and all of our stores – are a great center piece for that type of activity.
Can you tell us a little more about the activities that are happening in store for this Grand Opening?
Our partners at Reality came to us with some great ideas around using a green screen to help us promote unlimited calling to Europe. We have backgrounds of all around the world so that customers can understand that they can call all around the world – 34 countries including all of Europe– as part of their phone plan.
In addition we also have a very cool digital spin-wheel with prizes that our customers can come up and interact with and our demo bar is highlighting all of our newest, coolest products and services.
We have sweepstakes, and we had a ribbon cutting event that really showcases our efforts in the community to connect and invest.
What’s next for TWC?
It’s been a busy year. We actually are in the process of opening up 4 more stores before February. So we’ll do grand openings in January and February in Kentucky, North Carolina, and upstate New York in Syracuse. We are also transforming eight other stores in LA at the same time. We have 2 stores we are working in in NYC to add to our 12 that we have now. One at George Washington Bridge, and another in the NYU neighborhood on Broadway, so I think that will be very cool. Especially to align Time Warner Cable as a hip cool brand to students in that area. We hope to have that store open before kids go back to school in fall.
What’s it’s like working with Reality Interactive
I am very honored and happy to be working with Reality. Honestly they’ve been a partner with us since the moment we decide to take on this store transformation project so it’s been about three and a half years now for us.
The possibility of having a network that was going to be able to connect all of our transformed stores on to one cohesive site so that we can manage the content in and our real time is mind blowing to me. It’s just amazing that we’re able to show best in class across the industry for all the cable stores. When people come and visit the stores, they look at it – we may take it for granted but they’re blown away, and I am as well.
Reality does a great job as a partner for not always “yes’ing” us but actually prompting us to do better or saying “This isn’t working”, which is important as well.
We love a proactive partner, we love people who are bringing ideas to us, we love fresh thinking in addition to awesome customer services in and out every day, and I think it’s great to have a partner that provides that to us.
Watch the whole interview here:
