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Netflix bets big on the telephone experience
Netflix bets on telephone customer service, based in Oregon, to provide the edge they need in building an all-around good customer experience, to beat Blockbuster. An interesting strategy for an online company. Excerpt:
Netflix [decided against] other lower-cost places in the United States and overseas, because it thought that Oregonians would present a friendlier voice to its customers. Then in July, Netflix took an unusual step for a Web-based company: it eliminated e-mail-based customer service inquiries. Now all questions, complaints and suggestions go to the Hillsboro call center, which is open 24 hours a day. The company's toll-free number, previously buried on the Web site, is now prominently displayed.
Netflix teaches two lessons here in customer experience management:
• Fix the site first: For an online company, the website is the primary experience. Netflix did the right thing by optimizing their site first, and then looked to optimize the secondary experience - customer service requests, which only crop up after the customer has gone through the site experience.
• If you invest, do it right: Netflix invested not just in "more call reps" (which may have been nice in a press release but not great in reality) but in a more expensive domestic call center. And not just any domestic call center; it found the best city for its needs - polite Portland, Oregon.
The outcome of the Netflix-Blockbuster battle is yet undetermined (the latter has size and retail locations as advantages), but I like Netflix's ongoing commitment to customer experience.
Are you serious? How is that a good thing? I shop on the internet because I don't want to deal with people. It's good that they have a 24-hour call center and all, but I'd prefer sending them an email rather than being forced to call them. It doesn't make sense to eliminate that option. That's more like a bad experience for me.
I agree with GoatTuber. I mean, it's good that they have good phone support, but I actually prefer email support, especially for things which aren't time-critical, like, you know, watching movies. And it's not as if phone support can really resolve issues any more quickly than the postal service...
Interesting. This may have been a reaction to the 60 Minutes profile of Netflix from a while ago. In response to some web sentiment that Netflix customer service stinks, Leslie Stahl asked Reed Hastings to find the customer service phone number on the site. Hastings thought he knew where it was, and then he fumbled around when he couldn't find it. Nice to see them taking action on that point -- even if it did take them a while to do it right.
Portland has another advantage - a thoroughly neutral accent.
Why not a compromise - such as "live assist" or "live chat?" And, of course, there's the famous "automated assistant, Anna Ikea" with whom I've had some interesting conversations:
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/
That said, I agree with the previous comments - I hate calling for phone assistance.
They should provide both online and phone help. That would be service on the customer's terms.
I've noticed NetFlix service slipping lately, from not acknowledging a full-day's system outage, to their lack of support or even information about supporting the Mac platform with their streaming downloads.
If their communications continue to slip, they will falter.
This is NUTS. I understand them providing phone customer service, but I do NOT understand them BARRING any e-mail customer service. Especially in a web based company!! We should have that option!!! I don't have the time to screw around on the phone with Netflix over something minor. Maybe that's what they're hoping - that most of us will just not report errors on the web site and stuff like that. The whole site will go to pot in short order. I already see so many mistakes in the descriptions. For example, in one description it refers to the author of the novel as a character in the movie!!! Another has 1987 on a tv series from 2005 & 2006! I'm betting 50 people would've reported those errors in short order if there was a web way to do it. But we're not going to waste our cell phone minutes or our business hours or free time to sit on the phone with freakin' Netflix Customer Service.