MalaysiaMedia / pay-TV & streamingLaunch · $50K
Astro Malaysia

Every canceled decoder is a conversation that never happened: retention-first service for Astro's subscriber base

Deploy an agentic retention, collections, and renewal layer for Astro — two-way conversations in Bahasa Malaysia, English, Mandarin, and Tamil that intercept churn, recover overdue accounts, and convert expiring packages before the decoder goes dark.

Entry use case
Churn-risk retention & package-renewal conversations
Expected outcome
Reach 100% of the at-risk and expiring base with policy-bounded save and renewal offers, measured against the current outbound team's contact coverage and save rates
Recommended next step
Baseline current at-risk contact coverage and save rates with the retention team, then scope a churn-risk pilot on one subscriber segment with control-group measurement.
What we understand

Astro Malaysia's operating reality

Astro Malaysia is the country's leading pay-TV operator with a large residential base across Astro and NJOI, plus the sooka streaming platform and a significant radio and advertising business.

Public fact

The company has publicly reported multiple consecutive years of declining revenue with falling core profit, driven by pay-TV subscriber losses to streaming alternatives — while publicly pursuing cost transformation and growing sooka's paying base.

Public fact

Subscriber-retention economics dominate: every save is worth months of ARPU, yet outbound retention capacity covers only a fraction of at-risk accounts, and win-back outreach after cancellation is largely untargeted.

Reasoned inference

Overdue-payment disconnections generate both revenue leakage and churn: a missed bill becomes a lost subscriber when the only contact is a disconnection notice rather than a conversation.

Reasoned inference

Package-renewal and sports-season moments (Premier League windows, festive seasons) are predictable conversion spikes an agentic outreach layer could systematically monetize.

Seller hypothesis — validate

Validate with the account team before outreach: Churn-model maturity and at-risk segmentation quality · Subscriber-management and billing API readiness for offer execution · Retention offer-matrix ownership and approval process

Build vs buy

Why we have a right to win here

Buy-led target

Limited internal ability or appetite to build the core platform — strong candidate for the packaged solution

Evidence: Astro is a content and subscription operator in cost-transformation mode — technology investment is being rationalized, not expanded, and there is no internal AI-platform capability or ambition. Retention and collections automation will be bought, and judged purely on measured save and cure economics.

Why they won't build the full stack: An organization cutting legacy cost structures cannot open a platform-engineering front; it needs retention coverage this fiscal year at a variable cost that shrinks and grows with the subscriber base itself.

What management is signalling

Publicly reported multi-year revenue decline with sharply lower core profit in FY2025 and widening net video-customer losses, alongside cost-transformation efforts and sooka's paying base growing strongly.

Reported factFY2025 annual results · Mar 2025

GTM implication: Urgency is existential and budget is scarce: pitch a small, control-group retention pilot priced against save-rate economics, not a platform program.

What already exists (don't pitch this)
  • Astro and Astro GO apps with self-service account management
  • sooka streaming platform with a growing paying base
  • Outbound retention and collections teams
  • SMS reminder and campaign infrastructure
What customers still can't do end-to-end (pitch this)
  • →Two-way retention conversations covering the full at-risk base
  • →In-channel payment and reconnection during collections contact
  • →Four-language voice coverage across the subscriber demographic
  • →Churn-reason capture and save attribution at cohort level
Opportunity map

Where agentic communications pays off first

WorkflowWhy it matters hereValueComplexitySpeedChannels
Churn-risk retention & package renewal
Two-way conversations in the subscriber's language with save and renewal offers from the approved matrix, reasons-for-leaving captured, saves attributed per offer.
Subscriber losses are the company's defining problem; every conversation not had with an at-risk account is a decoder returned.
Friction today: Outbound retention teams reach a fraction of the at-risk base; expiry-driven downgrades proceed silently.
VoiceWhatsAppAstro app
Billing & collections conversations
Policy-timed payment reminders with in-channel payment links, hardship-sensitive arrangements within policy, reconnection completed in the same conversation.
Overdue accounts sit between revenue recovery and churn; a dignified payment conversation beats a disconnection notice on both counts.
Friction today: Reminder SMS blasts convert poorly; disconnection-triggered inbound calls arrive angry.
WhatsAppVoiceSMS
Technical support & installer appointments
Step-by-step diagnostics in four languages, avoidable dispatches filtered, installer slots booked and confirmed with one-tap reschedule.
Decoder, dish, and streaming issues drive truck rolls and repeat calls that a shrinking cost base cannot absorb.
Friction today: Guided troubleshooting depends on which agent answers; installer visits are booked blind.
WhatsAppVoiceAstro app
Watch the change

Churn-risk retention & package-renewal conversations: today vs the agentic model

Scenario: A 12-year subscriber flagged churn-risk after downgrading gets a WhatsApp conversation in Mandarin that surfaces the real issue — price versus a streaming bundle — and closes a right-sized sports-plus-sooka package from the approved matrix instead of losing the account.
Today
same interaction, two worlds
Agentic layer
At-risk base contacted
capacity-limited fraction
100% attempted
Platform capability
Cost per contact
$13.50 median assisted
$1.84 median self-service
Benchmark
QA coverage
1–2% sampled
100% scored
Platform capability
Sources & assumptions
  • · At-risk base contacted: Platform capability; save rate measured in pilot
  • · Cost per contact: Gartner customer service cost benchmarks, 2024
  • · QA coverage: Platform capability: every interaction logged and evaluated
  • · Gartner, customer service cost benchmarks (2024): $13.50 median assisted vs $1.84 self-service per contact
  • · McKinsey, digital-first collections research: 20–25% NPL reduction among leaders; up to 40% opex reduction with gen AI
  • · Baymard Institute: ~70% average cart abandonment (meta-analysis)
  • · IAMAI–Kantar via IBEF (2025): 900M+ Indian internet users; 98% consume Indic-language content
  • · LeadSquared and vendor funnel studies: 78% of students choose the first institution to respond (directional, vendor data)
  • · HDI / ITSM operator benchmarks: $15–25 per L1 ticket; 40–60% of L1 volume is resets/status (validate per customer)
  • · Conventional-flow wait times and volumes are typical operator patterns — assumptions to replace with the customer's own baseline
  • · Agentic-flow behaviors (context retention, 100% logging, in-line policy checks) are platform capabilities, not projections
Recommended solution

One integrated stack, opinionated for this account

Channels · Tilicho Labs
VoiceWhatsAppAstro appSMS

Voice & channel orchestration, telephony, conversational execution, session/state, routing, integration build. Capability coverage validated during implementation.

Intelligence · Google Cloud
Gemini reasoningEnterprise groundingWorkflow agentsMulti-agent orchestrationGoverned actionsEvaluation & analytics
Systems · Astro Malaysia
Subscriber managementChurn modelOffer matrixBillingPaymentsField serviceTicketing

API access to these systems is the critical-path dependency.

Trust & languages
Bahasa MalaysiaEnglishMandarinTamil

Identity-bound sessions, policy-bounded actions, 100% audit logging, human approvals at defined points, in-tenant intelligence.

Business case

The economics, with your numbers

Addressable monthly interactions900K
Seller assumption — replace in discovery
Current cost per interaction ($)$0.8
Industry benchmark scale — validate
Automation / assistance rate (%)55%
Seller assumption — pilot proves this
$720K
Current operating cost / mo
$2.7M
Modelled gross benefit / yr
0.2 mo
Payback on Launch
127%
3-yr ROI (modelled)
Automated/assisted interactions per month495K
Modelled AI run-cost per month (usage + cloud, system estimate)$173K
New monthly operating cost$497K

All figures are modelling estimates from the labeled inputs above — nothing here is customer-provided yet. The pilot's first job is replacing these assumptions with Astro Malaysia's measured baseline. Package price covers implementation only; recurring usage billed separately.

Recommended package

Launch — $50K implementation

Launch · $50K · A focused, fast production pilot8–10 weeks to a live, measured pilot

Why this package for Astro Malaysia: A cost-pressured account should see proof before platform: a Launch pilot on churn-risk retention with hard save-rate baselines is the credible entry, expanding to collections and technical service on evidence.

Included
  • Up to 3 channels
  • One priority workflow
  • Limited enterprise integrations (1–2 systems)
  • API credential & security setup
  • Core conversational + workflow configuration
  • Basic analytics
  • Controlled production pilot with defined success criteria
Not included
  • ✕Usage & consumption (billed separately)
  • ✕Additional workflows
  • ✕Multi-geography rollout
  • ✕Managed operations
Recurring costs (separate from the package)

Packages cover implementation and integration only. Recurring costs are billed separately: Tilicho Labs platform usage (~$0.15/call-min indicative, usage only), Google Cloud consumption, telephony/carrier charges, managed operations, and support & optimization. No package includes unlimited usage.

Customer resources required
  • · API access + credentials for: Subscriber management, Churn model, Offer matrix
  • · A named business owner for churn-risk retention & package-renewal conversations
  • · Security review counterpart and policy sign-off (Subscriber management scope)
  • · Baseline metrics for the pilot's success thresholds
Executive messages

What to say to whom

CEO

“Astro's turnaround math is simple: slow the subscriber bleed while costs come down. Retention conversations that reach 100% of the at-risk base — at a cost the P&L can carry — is the only lever that does both at once.”

CIO / CTO

“A bounded agentic layer on the subscriber-management and billing systems, deployed in weeks — no dependency on the broader transformation program's timeline.”

COO

“Your outbound team physically cannot call the whole at-risk base; the agent can, and hands humans only the high-value saves and hardship cases with full context.”

Chief Commercial Officer

“Renewal windows, sports seasons, and win-back campaigns become measured conversion funnels with offers bounded by approved economics — not blast SMS with 1% response.”

Chief Risk / Compliance Officer

“PDPA consent, contact-window rules, and offer boundaries enforced as configuration with complete logs — retention pressure never becomes conduct risk.”

CFO / Procurement

“A Launch-scoped pilot priced against numbers you already track: save rate, collections cure rate, and cost per contact. At current ARPU, a small save-rate lift pays for the platform.”

Outreach

Pre-built offer emails for Astro Malaysia

Written from this account's own research — the strategic signal, the capability gap, the entry workflow, and the modelled economics — not a mail-merge template. Pick the moment and the persona, edit anything, then copy or open in your mail client.

Moment in the deal
Cold outreach — no prior conversation
Who it's addressed to
Cares about: The workflow itself and its daily failure modes
Register
Length
Draft — edit freely before sending
Open in mail client

Customer-safe by construction: drafts are composed only from customer-facing fields. Account tier, build-vs-buy classification, priority score, internal routing, and partner-commercial detail are not inputs to the composer, so they cannot appear in a draft. Money figures are always framed as modelled from the customer's own volumes. Read before sending — you own what goes out.

The pursuit

Tier 3 — longer-term / partner-led

Why this tier

Malaysia's dominant pay-TV and streaming operator in structural decline — years of falling revenue and a shrinking subscriber base make churn management, collections, and package-renewal conversations existential workflows that a cost-cutting organization cannot staff its way through.

Recommended next step

Baseline current at-risk contact coverage and save rates with the retention team, then scope a churn-risk pilot on one subscriber segment with control-group measurement.

Entry: Churn-risk retention & package-renewal conversations · Launch package · 8–10 weeks to a live, measured pilot. Human fallback throughout; success thresholds agreed before build.

Start the pursuit

Research-based priority-account universe assembled from public information, market scale, communication volume, and solution fit. This is NOT an authoritative list of top Google Cloud customers; existing Google Cloud relationships are noted only where publicly reported. Validate every account with the account team before outreach.