Netflix is bucking the customer “service” trend, abandoning email “service” and replacing it with real human beings, based in the United States (not outsourced) on the telephone. These good folks are available 24×7 and their phone number is prominently displayed on Netflix’s web site.
The New York Times has an article on it, At Netflix, Victory for Voices Over Keystrokes.
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’s decision to eliminate the e-mail feature was made after a great deal of research, Mr. Osier said. He looked at two other companies with reputations for superb phone-based customer service, Southwest Airlines and American Express, and saw that customers preferred human interaction over e-mail messages. “My assessment was that a world-class e-mail program was still going to be consistently lower in quality and effectiveness than a phone program,â€
Thank you, Netflix! There are times when email meets my needs, mostly when I need to send a detailed, written description of a problem. Often, though, I want an immediate solution. In those cases, email just doesn’t cut it. I do not want to send a message and then wait an indeterminate amount of time for an answer. This is the reason why, at Hen’s Teeth Network, we prominently display both our phone number and our email address.
