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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.'"
AMAZING! In all likelihood, English was their first language too! I think I'm going to break-down and cry from all this excitement.
The game.
Atleast with a call center in portland, the deception doesn't start when the rep says "My name is George"
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
While it's great to be able to reach a human, sometimes you have a simple question, or a complicated one with a simple solution, such that email is a lot more time efficient. I've had a problem with Sprint billing and their customer service part of the site doesn't give an email, so I have to call in and be put on hold for 30 minutes, authenticate myself, and get shuffled around through several departments, just to be able to communicate the existence of a problem. On the other hand, with Vanguard (investments) you can both call and email, and this has saved me a lot of time, for example, when I have a question that doesn't need to be answered immediately. I just send it, and pick up the answer at my convenience. (Thought it's not "email" per se, but a messaging form after you log in.)
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Good enough for me - I just signed up. People always complain that everybody is outsourcing and service is bad and all. Well, here is your chance to put your money where your mouth is. I know I just did.
Peter.
It's nice that there's a call option that's home-grown, and there isn't a push for using the web/email for customer service, and all... but, did they have to cut e-mail out of the loop altogether?
DVDs by mail isn't such a big hairy deal that I need to jump on the phone and hold for who knows how long to express that I never got a disc that was sent when I can just shoot off an email saying "It's been a week, the disc you sent never got here, could you try again?" and forget about it.
(Partial disclosure: I am not a Netflix subscriber, but of another DVD-by-mail rental company (Full disclosure: Greencine) and never had any problems using e-mail only, although I think they've got an 1-800 number, too.)
More Twoson than Cupertino
But a few months ago, I decided to get back into it. At the time, I decided to try out both Blockbuster and Netflix at the same time, just to see how they stacked up. In the end, there was no comparison. Blockbuster's only advantage was their store exchange feature (where you can return your rental in a store and pick out a new DVD from the store). But it was completely outweighed by the terrible quality of every other aspect of their service.
Blockbuster was SLOW. Netflix, for me has a two day turnaround--I drop a DVD in the mail and 2 days later a new one. Blockbuster's turnaround was several days at best, much longer at worst.
Blockbuster's queue system is weak. It's nowhere nearly as sophisticated as Netflix's. Moving things around in Blockbuster's queue is a pain and it lacks features like getting a summary of the movie just by hovering your cursor over it and dragging-and-dropping movies to change their order.
Blockbuster's selection is a JOKE compared to Netflix. This is especially important to me as an indie film fan.
Blockbuster throttled me almost from day one. Movies would sit at the top of my queue with "Available" status, yet they would ship out a movie that was 6th on my list, and it would take them several days to do even THAT.
To me, this news of better customer service is just another way that Netflix shows that they've really got their stuff together. Blockbuster may have the store model down, but their online store leaves MUCH to be desired.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
What the f**k?!?! Are they tryin' to say people in New Jersey aren't f**kin' friendly enough?!?!? Freakin' lunatics... them and their weepy northwestern friends. Jersey doesn't need you or your stinkin' movies...
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
You know, I really don't care if I reach a voice, I just want my questions answered. There are situations where I prefer a computer answering, Airborne package pickup comes to mind. As for customer service I am happier to have a live chat with the rep as anything. I get a person (albeit they are multitasking) fairly quickly and there are no misunderstandings as the text is right in front of you. When I am done I get a transcript to file away in case I want to look at it again. Talking on the phone just takes way to long most of the time and I dont feel like I get as good of expertise on the first try as I do chat anyway.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
One important point which is ignored in TFA is that the use of simple to-the-point web forms for common issues (such as lost/damaged discs, excessive delays, or incorrect mailings) means that the typical user never has to call or email in the first place. Unlike a lot of other websites, these forms actually don't suck, either. In case you're a user and haven't found them yet, they're all accessible off of your account page.
Also, Netflix users frequently receive emails which are "checking up" on movie arrival times in order to provide an accurate estimate of when shipped discs will arrive. Having changed addresses twice with our family account, my wife and I have been very grateful for this "getting things right" mentality.
Misery loves company. Online misery loves unsuspecting random strangers.
They're not doing themselves any favours if the call centre has a huge wait time. At least with e-mail you can send the e-mail and wait for a response, as opposed to sitting there with the phone playing bad hold music on speakerphone or while you hold it in your hand. Though it's nice that they are using (relatively) local reps who no doubt speak English... it's not very helpful if you can't get to one in a reasonable amount of time.
Join the Empire! http://www.empirereborn.net/
I recently had to call NYPD to find out something about a ticket. So I dialed the local precint... To my amusement (not kidding):
Thank you for calling yadda yadda...
For homicide press 1
For a detective press 2
For donut squad press 3
Alright, so I made up donut squad... But it was funny yet a little scary to think that automation is going a little too far sometimes. I tried to call my mother recently and got the same thing:
Thank you for calling your mother...
If you need money press 1
If you need your laundry done, press 2
If its mother's day, press 3
Infiltrated dot Net
And that, my friends, is probably the best 'customer support' of all.
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
As long as you don't mention you're a Californian!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I still don't buy the 'throttling' rumors. When it was a big deal, I looked all over for some indication that Netflix was throttling delivery. I never found any. People would point to the Netflix terms of use as 'proof' that they admit to 'throttling'. There was never anything I found in their TOS that said they throttled. When people would explain what was happening to them, it always turned out that they just didn't get the movie that was a new release and at the top of their list.
I know that Netflix has rarely taken more than 1 day to receive my movies, and 1 day to get me a new one. This has been the case the entire time I have had Netflix, and I watch a LOT of movies. In fact, I usually go through about 30 movies a month on my three movie plan.
I think that part of the problem is that people get confused about what 'throttling' is. I know that Gamefly throttles. Throttling would be holding back deliveries. If Netflix sends you the second or third movie on your list because they don't have enough of the new release, and they give first priority to those that rent less, that is NOT throttling. In fact, doing the opposite would be throttling. If Young Sebastian only has one item on his list, and Ms. Black has 50, and there is only one copy of "Blades of Glory" left to send out. Sending it to Ms. Black would mean that Young Sebastian would be 'throttled', where as sending it to Ms. Black would mean that both people get a movie.
Another thing they did recently
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.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You said "That should not have a bearing on the issue. Although I am from India (and ESL country)english was the first language I learnt."
Then you're not ESL, are you? His earlier statements regarding ESL countries was what I was going for. There are several non-ESL people in ESL countries. And on the gripping hand, you said "learnt" which is almost certainly a UK idiom, even tho used over here once in a while. You mean a UK variant? 'learnt' is not an idiom. None of what you said has much at all to do with his primary big picture complaint, that offshoring to ESL countries is a bad idea. All you have really done is dodged his compalints with hand waving. If you had some bacon, you'd have bacon and eggs, if you had some eggs.
Next time, try answering his hig picture complaint. Convenient snippage here. Offshoring to ESL countries is not a bad idea. As long as you hire the right people and don't go overboard with cost cutting, you can still save some money without compromising service. Problem is that most companies outsource with the explicit purpose of cutting costs and go overboard.
Cheers! On the other hand, you didn't capitalize "english". I don't know what to make of that. This is slashdot, I make punctuation errors like there's no tomorrow. I fear no Nazis!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
So many companies today seem outright hostile to their customers. I am continually amazed how companies do their very best to avoid contact with their customers. Research has shown that people hate computer menus whether they're numerical or voice recognition. And if you do manage to fight your way past those, how many times have you heard "due to unusually high call volume"... 365 days a year, right? Insane.
It's not impossible to run a great call center. I used to work at Zappos and we did our calls in-house and usually maintained wait times under 30 seconds. And the good will we generated with customers has paid off big time. We took on several more established companies with deeper pockets and so far we've left them all in the dust, largely because of our focus on customers.
Also, it's not just about having people answering the phones. There's two other critical ingredients: the phone people have to be empowered to actually serve the customer, which means they have to be well trained, but dammit, that's what it takes to run a company. And they also need to have a voice back to the company itself, so that problems that they encounter are recognized and addressed -- because customer service problems are really just customer problems. And for all the companies spending millions on ads to establish their "brand", they could establish a real, authentic brand by resolving their customer's problems.
There is so much room to improve this kind of thing. I applaud Netflix and wish the luck. Any company that wants to take on the 800lb gorillas need only treat each customer with care and respect. The gorillas never seem to figure this out.
Cheers.