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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.'"
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
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.
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...
English was their first language too!
Mod parent up, I totally understand this problem. Why on earth companies that cater to a predominantly English speaking country off-shore their support to ESL countries where the people that can read & speak English DO NOT understand the vernacular, expressions, idioms and vocal inflexions are driving me nuts. How many companies do I have to put on a list to avoid because I just couldn't understand the person on the other end of the phone because:
1. They are ESL
2. They are reading exclusively from a script
3. The connection is so bad it sounds like we're both under water.
Just like if I were in France, I would expect a French speaking CSR...
--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.
// Hates outsourcing with Teh Very Core of my Being
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== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
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!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
Additionally, whether you learn a language as a first language or a second language is irrelevant to your skills in that language. I am better at understanding and communicating in my fifth language (Hindi) than several native speakers of the same due to better communication skills. When you learn a language is not so important as linguistic and communicative abilities. You seem to have an acute case of closed-mindedness. It was ignorant of you to make such a statement about the fine people of Texas Having a thick southern drawl is not a negative thing. In fact, it is helpful in the south to communicate better. It might be the portland hire's inability to bridge the gap. Point is that the difference between a NY accent and the southern drawl (which I semi-consciously find to be a mark of politeness) is no different from the differences between a Texan and a well educated Indian. and it was also ignorant of you to assume that you, with your fortunate upbringing, represent the whole, or even the majority of citizens of "ESL" nations. My upbringing was not especially fortunate. My parents spoke 3 languages at home and they just picked one to teach me. I picked up the other two as well and was very comfortable using them. I am by no means an exception like I said, a good portion of India's urban population have kids speaking english by the time the kids are in kindergarten. Regardless, it doesn't matter as long as peolpe like me DO exist and CAN be hired as opposed to dimwits who can't communicate.
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
I am fairly good with accents and to me, the southern drawl is not an issue. However, I know several people who DO have a problem with understanding various accents within the US including the southern drawl, the NY talk and ebonics. There is nothing about the indian accent that is unintelligible either.
Southern accents have never been an issue for me either, but more often than not Indian accents are. The problem is that the Indian accent is so think it IS unintelligible. I don't think you're a good judge of that because you were raised in India and were exposed to it growing up. Most people in the US aren't exposed to thick Indian accents on English speech, and for us it IS very hard to understand.
Even some of the Indians I've worked with I've had to really concentrate to work through the accent. Others have had less of an accent, probably because they've been here for quite a while.
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."
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.
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.