As a professional installer, it’s your job to explain to your customer why their digibox should be connected to their telephone line. Here, we remind you why making this connection is so important and why failing to keep them informed, can mean your customers are missing out on the full range of services.

One of the more important aspects of a digital satellite installation, but also one of the easiest to overlook, is the provision of a telephone connection to the Digibox.

Correctly installed, the telephone connection creates interactivity between broadcaster and viewer. Pay per view events can be ordered with a press of a button. E-mails can be sent to and received from any account in the world. A bank account can be managed and shopping ordered. It's even possible to have a flutter on your favourite team without leaving your armchair. Where the telephone connection is not installed correctly, none of those services are available.

In some cases, the telephone lead supplied with the set-top box will reach an existing telephone socket. However, in many cases, an extension socket must be fitted. Provision of a suitable socket is the responsibility of the customer and not part of a standard installation. For the installer with the necessary tools and expertise, an opportunity exists to offer the customer a valuable extra service and make a little extra profit from the job.

Explain the benefits
As with all things, it pays to make sure your customers get the full story about digital satellite. Recent research shows that some retailers are failing to explain the importance of the telephone connection to their customers. Consequently, some consumers will disconnect the line without realising the implications of their actions.

At first, the difference will go unnoticed, but eventually the consumer will discover that interactive services don't work. For example when the customer settles down on the sofa to book a film, or place a bet during a match they'll get an error message from the Digibox, which they may find confusing.

In many cases, the customer will contact the installer to demand an explanation and a fix. By explaining fully the benefits created by the telephone connection, the problem, and it's potential for unnecessary service calls, can be avoided. The telephone connection even provides benefits for the installer during the initial installation. Using auto callback to authorise the installation is significantly quicker than the manual report that must be made where the telephone line is not working.

To make explaining the benefits easier, we have compiled a list of facts and services that will help to convince your customers to stay connected.

Facts and Services
The free Digibox offer from Sky saves your customers almost £300. One of the contractual conditions of this offer is that the box is connected to the telephone line with the number quoted in the Sky contract in order to make sure that all services are activated. The connection doesn't cost the consumer a penny unless they choose to use a pay service.

The telephone connection is used to ensure that the Digibox is running up-to-date software.

Pay-per-view events are most easily activated through the telephone system. This includes watching Sky Box Office Movies and Premiership Plus pay per view events.

Users can access the free Sky Active Email service without a PC or any PC experience. The Sky Digital remote control or the Sky Active infrared keyboard can control the easy to use system. Sky Active allows you to send and receive email and store up to 50 email addresses.

Sky Active Home Shopping gives the user access to high street names from the comfort of their sofa, including travel, takeaway food, electrical goods, sports goods and a whole lot more.

With Sky Active, your customers can do their banking through the TV 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Access their account, transfer money, check balances, pay bills and more. Safe in the knowledge their account information is secure.

Sky Active betting service enables users to have a flutter while they watch sports events.

With Sky News Active Voting, users can register their votes to current affairs and issues relating to the news as it happen. Once the appropriate button has been pressed, the viewer will receive confirmation that their vote has been registered.

Play Jam, Sky Gamester and Games in Sky Active are all available in the interactive menu. Register high scores or pay-to-play the best games on your Digibox.