Netflix Makes It Easy To Reach a Human

msblack writes "In a move that goes against the prevailing trends of outsourcing and non-interactive customer support, Netflix has forsaken e-mail as a means of resolving customer problems. According to the NYTimes article, Netflix set up a call center in Portland OR, shunning other popular US call center cities (because Portland natives were perceived to sound friendlier) or off-shoring. 'It's very interesting and counter to everything anybody else is doing,' said Tom Adams, a market researcher in Carmel, California. 'Everyone else is making it almost impossible to find a human.'"

Comments

Re:Call center in Oregon...

[vigmeister]

I think there's a middle ground between your comments and mine though thank you for expanding, I didn't have time to better articulate my issues. I agree with your issues having faced them myself. I have better luck with Indian reps because I am familiar with 'Indian English' :)

I'm sure the people in the Indian call centers are doing a fine job with what they have & I certainly don't fault them Amex hires some good cutomer reps in India. They tell you their real name and don't hide their accent. They also communicate extremely well. However, this is an exception to the rule since most Indian cost centers focus so much on saving money that they hire incompetent and unskilled people for a pittance.

They're just trying to make a living however the limitations I mentioned do exist and there's not really much at presence to do with it. Don't quite follow this last sentence (maybe becasue I am Indian ;) )

I am not denying the limitations and to put it in less diplomatic terms, Indian call centers are crappy. But I am fairly sure that the source of the problem is not the fact that it is Indian, but rather the fact that the companies are cutting costs to the point where the quality of service is atrocious. If they spent a bit more money, they could hire better employees and have more stable and clear connections to India. The companies provide us with the least level of quality that we will put up with, so some of the blame lies with us for not complaining or objecing to their service.

I ntoday's society I find a lot of people clubbing their objection to outsourcing and the quality of service to strengthen their argument against the low quality call centers in India. I think these are separate issues. I will accept that it would be easier for me to bitch about Indian call centers. If you do it, people might misconstrue it as an argument against outsourcing or xenophobia. If I do it, they take my argument at face value.

Cheers!

Another point to Netflix:

[Kadin2048]

--You know, stuff like this actually makes me want to go out of my way to *support* NetFlix -- for doing the Right Thing(TM) for their CUSTOMERS. Definitely; I'm proud to be a Netflix customer and happy to recommend them to anyone.

Another thing they did recently ... they reduced their prices. Sent me a letter in the mail, said 'hey, the plan you're on is now $14.95/mo instead of $19.95, congrats.'

I was really surprised. Most companies I would have expected to just bump me up one level of service (to the 4-at-a-time plan or something) while keeping me at the same price level, making me call them up to downgrade to my old level of service in order to save money. They didn't; they just dropped the price, and I didn't have to do a thing.

It's a little ridiculous that I get surprised by a company doing what ought to be the right and obvious thing, but that's how things work these days. Anyway, kudos to Netflix and whoever is in charge there. Hope they can keep it up.

Re:Call center in Oregon...

[CmdrGravy]

Well said, I have had numerous bad experiences with call centres and regardless of where the staff are actually located the same factors come into play which determine the quality of the service you recieve.

Any company intending to set up a call centre needs to make the following decisions

1) Do I employ people who understand the business we're engaged in or the cheapest person we can find.

2) Do we allow the staff to use their own initative when speaking to the customers and rely on their knowledge of the businesss or do with give the cheapest people we could find a script

3) Do allow our staff to take as long as is necessary, including time after the call has finished ( to update records of conversation, make enquiries etc ) to resolve the problem or do we assume that all problems can be fixed in 2.35 minutes and 10 seconds is plenty of time to get ready for the next call

4) Do we reward those staff who help our customers most and learn from their techniques or do we reward those staff who have the most calls

5) Do we expose our staff to the other departments in our business so they gain an understanding of them and build relationships with people there who can sort out customers problems or do we keep them locked in a basement and communicate to them in barked commands

6) Do we allow our staff the leeway to take decisions as to how to deal with a problem and provide a good resolution for the customer or do we encourage them to concede no ground, admit no failure and re-route the call to random departments or drop it when the heat goes up

Those places which make the right decisions may cost more to run but from a customers point of view are vastly preferable to deal with. Since a call centre is now probably my only exposure to any particular company ( apart from the actual service or whatever they're providing me ) then the performance of that call centre is a very important factor in choosing where to do business. It's nice that people are finally starting to realise that.