Wednesday 29 October 2014

Netflix - enough of an experience for the money?



Netflix (www.netflix.com) is an American supplier of streamed media operating in Europe and across a number of regions outside the states. The company has been pioneering media streaming services for over a decade and competing directly with the Amazon on demand offering. Netflix is available through your browser or through mobile and tablet native applications allowing you to view TV and film on the go. The interface to access your content is a wonderfully rich experience with vertical and horizontal scrolling through their database of titles. In the background Netflix is running matching algorithms to learn your viewing patterns and suggest the most likely titles to suit your taste even predicting your ratings for these unwatched gems. Streaming is very reliable with high quality imagery uninterrupted by painful buffering issues. It even remembers where you are as you jump between platforms picking up on a movie started on your TiVo box that you finish watching on your iPad. The problem is not with the technology but the content. Much of the content served up is old or not mainstream popular picks. Leaving you floundering to find something to watch that grabs you. Netflix has a huge user base and should invest in first class content to maintain its market position. Epic experience in media streaming needs epic content. 

Wednesday 15 October 2014

The patient experience of getting a new iPhone 6

As demand seems to have outstripped supply customers are finding their patience tested in waiting for a new iPhone. With lengthening delivery timescales on the 64gb models customers are getting poor service by the network carriers who are pointing the finger at their supplier while still collecting the costs of the new devices which they cannot be sure on when they will arrive. This tension is forcing customers to test the feedback loops available through the networks and independent suppliers.  Your most guaranteed route would appear to be with Apple direct and then securing your network after the event as Apple protect the delivery stream to their direct customers. Options for the weary customer?  Sit it out?  Switch to android or windows? Go big and switch to a 128gb model that seems to have greater availability due to the premium price?  General advice is keep pursuing your supplier and in the event they have taken money from you seek to agree an acceptable compensation for this. Epic customer experience on shiny new devices is unfortunately not easy to come by. 

Sunday 5 October 2014

Call centre queueing - making it worse than it should be

When resorting to the phone for customer interaction you are eager for personal connection and prompt support. You have elected to skip the digital channels for your own reasons and head for the conventional analogue channel no doubt deciding this is the path of least resistance to achieve your goals. You hope to avoid a multitude of options and steps between you and the right person, keeping your fingers crossed to connect direct with a well informed individual. Many companies recently seem to be delivering incredibly well in this area but I have found some of these gems of service couple this with a horrendous queueing system. Poor music is acceptable but not giving an up to date notification of your position in the queue is criminal. Finding you are 20th in the queue is never good but being left stranded for 30 minutes without any feedback means when you finally get through your mood leaves you in no position to talk rationally. Call centres need to keep customers as informed as possible, missing this out avoids an epic experience.