The New York Times today reports that Netflix (massive US DVD-rental-by-post operator with 6.7 million subscribers) has entirely closed their email help channel. Now all customer interaction is via a call centre. As a predominantly web-based business, this is seen as a bold move. Netflix also decided to not send the call centre business offshore, but purposefully chose an area of the US (Portland, Oregon) which was perceived to present a "friendlier voice to its customers".

Two interesting quotes from the article:

Netflix’s decision to greet anxious consumers with a human voice, not an e-mail, is also unusual in corporate customer service. “It’s very interesting and counter to everything anybody else is doing,” said Tom Adams, the president of Adams Media Research, a market research firm in Carmel, Calif. “Everyone else is making it almost impossible to find a human.”

and

Netflix places no particular requirements on call duration, preferring that customer service representatives take the time they need to keep a customer happy and loyal.

I don't know how "friendly" people from Portland sound, but will this move start a trend, and will it mean anything for UK operations?

Full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/16/business/16netflix.html

CR.

I find it unusual you consider this a victory, I consider this a bad thing, taking away a method of customer contact is never good, there are people who enjoy e-mails and do not need an immediate response, people that don't like having to pick up the phone, wait on hold and then talk to someone.

If they wanted to offer voice in addition to their e-mail help channel that would be great.

ps: I was just in Portland two weeks ago, great city, friendly people.

I agree with Justin - surely it is how their customers want to contact them that is important? I suppose the only proof will be their subscriber numbers in 2008 ;)

Interesting the comment "...impossible to find a human." - I thought they were talking about emails here - not self-service.

Is this truly the public's perception of emails? i.e. A non-human form of communication?

I'd be interested in the views of more members of this forum to see what our opinions are!

I've worked in several contact centres that had multiple forms of contact and we found one thing.

That if a person contacted us via chat, email or phones....they would consistently use that same method everytime. ie: they would pick which method they wanted and stick with it. We found that people who called in were much easier (and cheaper) to switch to a chat/e-mail contact than the other way around.

Netflx's decision to do this I find even stranger than others. The entire benefit (arguably) for Netflix is that it *IS* impersonal...that you no longer have to head down to the videostore and deal with a person to get the video. Their entire membership understands this and prefers the Netflix method of slower response time.

To force your people to use a certain method, especially when you are removing an option is a bad thing.

and of course its MUCH harder for the organisation to cross sell/upsell the products or get your customer to renew if they rely on email/text.

Maybe this Netflix story needs to be re-visited this time next year to see whether this change in communication method has made any difference

In defense of Netflix this is quite a bold move and allot of thought must have been put into it otherwise there could be a compromise to their level of business

On a personal note i feel better dealing with someone over the phone as i feel more confident that something will be done than when i have sent and email only to have my time wasted because i had to phone the company back to get an answer because of the slowness or non existent response

Time will tell !!