Article

Netflix takes service outage, turns it into a customer service opportunity

Quick response and a proactive attitude turn what could have been a negative into a win for the brand.

May 17, 2009 by James Bickers — Editor, Networld Alliance

For about six hours this past Wednesday evening, an undisclosed number of Netflix subscribers ran into difficulty watching streaming movies from the popular service. The outage only affected people trying to watch content on their computers — set-top boxes worked just fine.

Technology outages happen, and customers expect them to some degree. For people watching content on a computer, it's not like there is nothing else out there to entertain them; the people affected likely just switched over to Hulu or YouTube or any of the countless broadcaster-specific streaming options.

As such, it would have been easy for Netflix to do nothing. Stuff happens, right? But this is a company known for above-and-beyond customer service, and true to form, it took a proactive step by sending everyone affected a two percent discount off their next month's bill.

One of the people hit by the outage was Edward Albro with PC World magazine. He blogged about the experience, and wisely pointed out that not only did the company stand out by offering the discount, it made the whole process seamless and painless for the user:

"What hoops did I have to jump through to get my discount? Call Netflix and wait on hold for 10 minutes? Fill out an online form documenting exactly what happened and when? Nope. All I had to do was click a link in the e-mail. I was taken to the Netflix site, where I saw a message that my discount would be applied to my next bill."

It may have been a small and isolated incident, but it's also a great reminder of how a little bit of proactive customer service can stir up passion for a brand. To paraphrase Napoleon Hill, opportunity often comes disguised as misfortune or defeat.

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