There’s been a customer service exchange that has been making the rounds on the Internet over the last few weeks. It’s a great piece of creativity, and for lack of a better term, the customer service employee had the cajones to go for it.
I can’t put into words how fascinating I find it that we don’t hear more about this type of stuff on daily basis. Captain Netflix (this is what I’m calling him), put himself out there and created a positive experience for the customer. It could just have easily blown up in his face (the customer didn’t like the tone of the conversation, wasn’t willing to have the silly retorts, etc.), but Captain Netflix went for it. He realized he can only do so much within this chat room setting and he expanded on it, got creative, and now his conversation is posted all over the Internet.
Positive customer service experiences are hot topics because all too often the only types of posts about customer service that make the rounds on the Internet focus on the negative. I like to believe there are far more positive customer service experiences that occur on a daily basis, but we rarely hear about them. Here are just a few things that I think we can learn from the exchange of Captain Netflix.
Netflix is a good company that supports its employees. I haven’t seen anything on the Internet that suggests Captain Netflix got in trouble for this conversation, or received some type of reprimand for thinking outside the box. This tells me that Netflix is a company that wants its employees to find new ways to tackle simple problems (like Parks and Rec having a playback error).
Consumers are looking for that next level of service that outdoes previous service experiences they’ve had in the past. If you got on Netflix right now, and had a problem, would you not want, and expect, this same level of service?
In the Internet age, the world of troubleshooting and problem solving is drastically changing. If there’s a problem with a product or service, it’s highly unlikely you will speak with a person face to face or by the phone anymore. Chat rooms and email correspondence are becoming the norm, and it’s nice to see that there can still be a level of personality and individuality that can come in the conversation, even through the computer screen.