In the highly competitive streaming and digital entertainment industry, customer experience is just as critical as the content catalog.

MUBI is a global destination for cinema lovers. Unlike mass-market platforms driven by algorithms, MUBI acts as a curator, producer, and distributor of high-quality independent, documentary, and arthouse cinema. Operating in over 190 countries with a brand built on trust and taste, MUBI’s internal team has historically protected its customer experience fiercely, avoiding traditional outsourcing to maintain a high-touch, "in-house" standard.

But high-growth SaaS and subscription models come with a unique set of operational challenges.

The Challenge: The Quarterly Surge and the Churn Risk

MUBI’s internal support team operates efficiently, managing an average of 300 emails a day. However, like many subscription-based entertainment platforms, MUBI’s business model involves quarterly sales, new release premieres, and heavy promotional periods.

These events created a recurring operational bottleneck:

• The volume spike: For roughly three weeks every quarter, ticket volume would triple, hitting 900+ tickets per day.

• The backlog: During these surges, MUBI’s backlog would spiral up to 2,500 tickets.

• The wait: First Response Times (FRT) ballooned to 5–7 days.

In the digital streaming world, subscribers expect instant gratification. A 5-day wait to resolve an account access issue or process a cancellation request directly damages brand trust and increases permanent churn. The internal team felt "helpless" against the volume, and critical projects, like manual QA testing for new platform releases, were paused just to clear the queue.

"We struggled to keep up with peak periods. We realized the problem wasn't resolved by just growing the team permanently, because the issue was specific to a timeframe. We needed something flexible enough to fill the gaps." 
Margarida Patricio, Co-Head of Customer Support, MUBI

Traditional BPOs were not an option. The "state of the art" in traditional outsourcing requires rigid, long-term headcount contracts and weeks of lead time to scale, making them fundamentally incompatible with MUBI’s need for surgical, intermittent support.

The Solution: True Flexibility for the Subscription Lifecycle

MUBI partnered with Onepilot to build a support layer that acts as an elastic, on-demand extension of their internal team, specifically tailored to handle high-stakes SaaS workflows.

1. Strategic Triage for "High-Anxiety" Tickets

Onepilot agents were deployed specifically to handle repetitive, high-volume requests: mostly subscription management and cancellations.

• The Impact: These queries account for roughly 50% of total tickets.

• Why it matters: In a subscription model, cancellation flows require immediate attention. By offloading this 50% to Onepilot, MUBI ensured users received instant, frictionless responses, leaving a positive last impression that leaves the door open for future reactivation (win-backs).

• The Focus: MUBI’s internal experts were freed to handle complex, film-specific, and technical inquiries without the pressure of a looming backlog.

2. Scaling Quality Within 24 Hours

Scaling fast usually means a drop in quality, but Onepilot's onboarding framework is built for hyper-growth SaaS teams. When MUBI needs to scale from 3 to 5 agents during a sudden promo spike, Onepilot deploys them within one day.

Quality is secured through a rigorous, compressed onboarding flow:

• Specialized Onepilot Academy training tailored to MUBI's tone of voice.

• Mandatory shadow sessions with experienced agents before going live.

3. Total Control via the Onepilot OS

MUBI utilized Onepilot’s proprietary dashboard to maintain full oversight. Agents typically run 6-to-8-hour shifts, resolving 40+ tickets per 2h shift. Because MUBI assigns the exact volume of tickets for each shift directly, their managers retain granular control over the workload, offering the transparency of an internal team with the elasticity of an outsourced one.

MUBI x Onepilot: The Results

The partnership transformed MUBI’s ability to handle scale, protecting their subscriber base during the most critical times of the year.

"For our internal team, the impact was very noticeable. Day-to-day attitude and motivation are much better. They feel more energized to do their work because they are less pressured about the backlog."

Margarida Patricio, Co-Head of Customer Support, MUBI

The Onepilot Difference: Disrupting the BPO Status Quo

How can Onepilot offer instant scalability while traditional BPOs require weeks of lead time and minimum seat requirements? The answer lies in the Onepilot Operating System and its approach to leverage freelance agents.

Unlike traditional outsourcing models that rely on rigid forecasting and physical call centers, Onepilot combines a Homeshoring model with a proprietary OS. Leveraging our community of over 2,000 independent agents worldwide, we can instantly cover any time zone or shift pattern.

• The +70% Capacity Boost: This tech-driven approach allows Onepilot to increase MUBI's support capacity by 70% within 48 hours when a new film premiere or promo launches while maintaining SLAs.

• Dynamic Shift Management: Our OS allows us to open shifts dynamically based on real-time ticket volume, matching the unpredictable nature of B2C streaming traffic.

• AI-Boosted Productivity: Built-in AI tools assist agents with context and suggested responses, ensuring lightning-fast Average Handling Times (AHT) without losing the human touch.

Future-Proofing with Languages

Because the infrastructure is always "on," MUBI can effortlessly switch on native support for new languages without a lengthy onboarding process, essential for a streaming platform continuously launching in new international markets. With English & Spanish currently being supported, the Mubi team can activate new languages in under 2 weeks.

The Next Step: A Hybrid Support Model

As the partnership evolves, the next step is to further optimise how low-complexity, high-volume requests are handled. By combining automation for repetitive queries with Onepilot’s flexible human support, MUBI can ensure fast resolution times while maintaining a high-quality customer experience during peak periods.

This hybrid approach allows support to scale efficiently based on volume and complexity, while keeping human agents focused on high-value interactions.

"My experience with Onepilot was surprising. I expected the rigidness of traditional outsourcing, but I found flexibility and adaptability. The solution mirrors our business cycles, allowing us to handle up to 3x volume spikes without impacting service quality or overloading our internal team. Now, it feels like they are in-house."

Margarida Patricio, Co-Head of Customer Support, MUBI