The Agonizing Death of Customer Service
Among the many responses I have gotten this week to my blog about Netflix throttling, there were several questions as to how, exactly, I managed to get any kind of response from the company. Well, it wasn’t easy.
Like so many companies these days, Netflix makes it nearly impossible to find a customer service phone number online. I spent a solid hour looking for one. Nothing. Nada. Not even close. They would rather drive you to the brink of insanity than let you speak to an actual person. And for the kind of questions I had, and still have, there is just no way an e-mail response management (ERM) system was going to cut it. But given no other choice, I carefully crafted my e-mail and demanded a specific, personal response to my questions.
Here’s what I got back:
Greetings,
Thank you for contacting Netflix Customer Service. We will personally reply to your message as quickly as possible. Please do not reply to this email unless pertinent information was missing from your original message. Duplicate correspondence may delay our ability to respond to your inquiry. Did you know that you can check your order status and history directly through the Your Account link located at the top of each page? Also, if you have additional Customer Service questions, please check our Help Center. Again, thank you for contacting Netflix Customer Service.
Sincerely, The Netflix Team
After a heated exchange, I eventually got a human being (I think) to respond to my e-mail. Perhaps their ERM system is designed to recognize patterns of escalating expletives, and then, and only then, refer it to a service rep.
But my Netflix experience was typical of customer service in the Internet age: really bad. All the technology in the world isn’t fixing the long, slow slide that customer service has taken in the past 10 years. In fact, it’s making it worse. Just look at what poor Paul English had to do so that innocent customers like us could bypass the maddening interactive voice recognition systems so many companies force upon us. And anyone who has spent any time speaking to a customer service representative in India knows that cutting costs means worse service. Even the IT help desk where I work won’t pick up the phone anymore. We have to send them e-mail.
On the bright side, there seems to be a growing awareness of the problem. Citigroup has crafted an entire advertising campaign around its “Press ‘0’ to talk to a person” initiative. Perhaps it will start a trend. Now if only I could get hold of a live person from our help desk. Hey guys, are you reading this?
