One of the fun things about writing a blog is that you begin to receive PR firm emails asking you to talk to this expert or that specialist. I started by sending them all to junk but overtime began to see them as a valuable source for understanding what the hot topics are.
Monday I received one of my favorites of all time asking my to interview an expert on why it is “Too Little Too Late for Netflix.” This expert was saying that Netflix will not survive because of their recent decision to raise rates and split DVD from VOD. For some reason he believes that this decision impacts customer service. I’ll grant that the dramatic drop in stock price says that there are many unhappy people out there, but the question becomes: why are they unhappy?
Customer service is what a company provides to a customer to support their purchase or use of a product or service. It is distinctly different from customer satisfaction although the two are related. Netflix is in the middle of a customer satisfaction issue. Anytime costs increase 60% customers will become unhappy (regardless of the fact that it’s still the best deal on the market by a LONG shot). Netflix’s customer service is still the same as it always was. They still deliver a high quality product with the same set of standards as always.
It is possible to have amazing customer service but still have a terrible customer satisfaction level. Just like it’s possible to have great customer satisfaction with terrible customer service (wave hello to Google!). Don’t get me wrong, it’s all interconnected and being bad in one will usually imply you are bad in the other.
Netflix has a marketing problem – not a service problem. And if you confuse the two issues you will only end up with a solution that doesn’t fix the problem.