How can we make a difference?

[StaceD]

Hi everyone, I look after our Accessility teams and I've been doing some listening groups with our staff recently about some of the key themes that are frustrations and challenges. It would be remiss of me not to ask our wonderful customers the same question.... so, what are the 1 or 2 things that we could do that would make your expereince of Sky better? I'd love to know your thoughts. 

Going forward, I'll make some time each week to come and say hello here and seek your input. Thanks for reading

[MoreTeeVicar]

Hi StaceD

My mother, who has dementia, was able to use the Sky HD+ remote control to call up the TV Guide (the fact that the remote had a button labled TV Guide was helpful) and she could read the simple layout to choose a programme she wanted to watch.

Now she has Sky Q, and finds it almost impossible to navigate the new UI,  it is not intuitive. If it was , I wouldn't find my Mum randomly pressing buttons to get what she wants!

Why don't you offer a customer setting

The default setting is the new Sky Q UI, but also give your customers the choice of swithching back to the simpler Sky HD+ UI.

You wouldn't be depriving any customers who like the new UI, but those who prefer a simple UI would welcome the option.

Also, Why have you done away with a one press button to bring up the TV Guide.

There are lots of unused buttons on the remote (green/yellow/blue) how about making one of these jump straight to the TV-Guide.

[StaceD]

Thank you @MoreTeeVicar  this is really insightful. Let me chat to the product team to understand what's available. 

[TimmyBGood]

@StaceD 

In our household it's the persistent absence of subtitles on UHD content which is the biggest gripe: with a daughter hearing-impaired from birth and now in her late teens, this means that family viewing is HD-only despite having had UHD since Sky released it for Q (and also now missing out on the option for HDR content too, as that's all in UHD).  Having no subtitles available on a lot of HD on-demand content is an issue too.

[SDR]

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@TimmyBGood wrote:

@StaceD 

In our household it's the persistent absence of subtitles on UHD content which is the biggest gripe: with a daughter hearing-impaired from birth and now in her late teens, this means that family viewing is HD-only despite having had UHD since Sky released it for Q (and also now missing out on the option for HDR content too, as that's all in UHD).  Having no subtitles available on a lot of HD on-demand content is an issue too.

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100% agree on this not getting value out of it as a result.

[StaceD]

@SDR  @TimmyBGood  thak you for telling me about this. It's one that we're investigating how we can get more and better quality subtitling across a range of channels and quality formats. Are there any particular channels or programmes that cause the most frustration?

[TimmyBGood]

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@StaceD wrote:

 Are there any particular channels or programmes that cause the most frustration?

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Sky Cinema would be the main one, particularly for Premieres.

[StaceD]

@TimmyBGood  thanks for the info. We're using all the feedback herre to talk to both our product development teams and the design areas. It's really helping us to prioritise and be specific in our asks. 

[Laing1]

@StaceD hiya  I see in the forums all the time customers asking about the accessibility remote and I do recommend customers look into this and contact the team for one but a suggestion I have would be to have the accessibility remote with voice control. Giving customers the best of both worlds  a remote with bigger buttons easier to hold but also with voice control 😁😁😁

[MoreTeeVicar]

Sadly voice control for an 80+ year old with dementia is not an alternative.

My Mum recognises the Sky remote control and wants to operate it in the way that she has done so for about the last 10+ years.

Unfortunately the Sky product developers who impose change on people do not realise that for some customers, change is not just undesirable, it can mean that difference between being able to use something and not being able to use it at all.

[prescol]

Being visually impaired one very useful feature would be text to speech on the TV Guide.

Or being  able to make the text larger within the sky Q Interface.

A wishful feature would be, being able to change the colour of the sky Q interface, with pre-loaded text and background colours. For example yellow Text on a  black background. 

finally finally the audible app been able to access it on the sky Q.. when you don't want to watch TV but listen to a book. 
well we can always wish

[StaceD]

@Laing1  that's great feedback thanks. We're talking to our product teams next week and feeding all this in, so good to know that some of our Accessibility customers prefer voice services. 

[StaceD]

@prescol  these are briliant suggestions. The text size we already have on our wish list, but the selectable colours are new to me.  We are exploring text to speech as we speak, so we'll let you know more as soon as we do. 

Got to keep wishing 🙂 thanks for the feedback. I'm loving audible on my phone at the moment, so I can see how that would be a good addition too. 

[philip+nedging]

get a system that allows people to speak to an adviser, show a number to ring, failing that cease trading

[StaceD]

Hi @philip+nedging  I'm so sorry that you feel like we've been hard to get in touch with. If you're a registered Accessibility customer you can find our telephone number here  and get through to one our advisors. The page also tells you when we are busier/quieter. If that's not right for you, there is also a messaging service, live sign or email.