HFTB Marketing Blog

I got an email yesterday from Netflix. They don’t typically barrage me with meaningless, salesy emails… so I opened it.

It was an apology. My first thought was: “An apology for what? I really enjoy Netflix and their new streaming service is awesome.” It is, by the way, awesome.

The apology turned out to be for a problem I might have experienced watching their instant streaming service over my Xbox 360. That’s right – might. They were proactively apologizing for something that I didn’t even have a problem with.

Here’s a screenshot of the actual email.

Now, the traditional wisdom on a situation like this might have been to wait for the complaints to come in and then respond to them in turn. After all, they wouldn’t want to alert subscribers like me that didn’t experience a problem that there might be something wrong with the service. Silly, isn’t it.

But I’ve heard thinking like this time after time from companies. The old, “let them come to us and don’t cause a problem in the meantime” strategy. Problem is, waiting for your customers to come to you with a problem isn’t good enough. And with the wealth of social media tools available to businesses today, there really isn’t any excuse for doing so.

The great thing about the Netflix approach is that they turned a negative into a real positive – even for subscribers like me that didn’t experience a problem in the first place.

To contrast this approach, take a look at Blockbuster. The purpose of this post is not to slam Blockbuster. We were subscribers for years. But the experiences have been so different to this point, I think it’s worth relating.

Blockbuster had a great program that allowed subscribers a certain number of titles at one time on a monthly basis… same as Netflix. However, Blockbuster’s differentiator was key for us. They allowed two in-store movie swaps per month. So not only could you get movies through the mail, you could also get instantly gratified in-store if you just had to check out the new Ben Affleck flick (unlikely, I know… but stay with me).

Problem was, Blockbuster canceled the in-store swaps. Okay, I get it… probably too expensive. My issue wasn’t with Blockbuster canceling the feature. It was the manner in which they did it. I might have received an email – not sure if I did or not. Blockbuster sends quite a few emails on a monthly basis typically with little relevant content. This equals a low clickthrough in my experience. I probably didn’t open it if I got it in the first place.

The way we found out that our subscription had been downgraded (features downgraded… not price, by the way, that cunningly stayed the same) was when the store clerk told me I could no longer swap the movie out as in the past. And that was the extent of the explanation. Evidently Blockbuster in store has no exposure to the Blockbuster Online account information.

So what’s the moral of the story? Simply put: Communicate with your customers. Good, bad or indifferent, just let them know what’s going on. Good businesses don’t need to hide behind customer service departments. They can preempt customer service calls by being straightforward and offering mea culpas when they make sense.

As a subscriber, I feel better about Netflix today than I did yesterday. Primarily because they screwed up!

What do you think about companies that take a proactive stance toward customer service issues? Have you had similar experiences, either positive or negative?

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Marketing Disruptive Technology, email, Media Tools, Netflix, Proactive Approach, social media tools

Take a look at the link below for an example of a great way to manage a potential crisis using social media.

Orbit Baby video

Full disclosure… we own an Orbit system car seat and base and have been extremely happy with the product. We have not been in an accident – thank God.  But we did receive the initial email that went out to registered owners of the company’s products.

In the past, our limited experience with Orbit customer service has been excellent.

That having been said, the way the company has dealt with a possibly horrific PR situation has been, in my opinion, a wonderful example of the way social media and the Internet can be used to defuse a potential crisis and reassure a customer base.

It is not often that a company can absorb a review by an industry leader like Consumer Reports gracefully while addressing the issues at hand. But I believe that if any company can get through this type of situation, a company with the new media savvy of Orbit Baby will.

As a parent of a toddler who rides in an Orbit seat everyday, after reading the explanation and viewing the video, I feel comfortable that the seat is as safe as they come.

Take a look for yourself and let me know your opinions. How do you think they handled the situation?

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PR Crisis Control, Customer Base, email, Media Control, PR, Social Media

Image by lepiaf.geo

I spend a lot of time in Starbucks. In between client meetings I tend to locate the nearest coffee shop to check email or catch up on other work.

One thing I notice in just about all Starbucks is the state of the condiment bars.

I don’t actually use the condiment bars, as I prefer a black cup of coffee to the multi-syllabic, linguistically confusing creations that have become the norm.

Who knew, by the way, that so many are lactose intolerant. Crazy.

Anyway, Irritable Bowel Syndrome aside, the point of the condiment bar observation has little to do with what you are, or aren’t, putting in your coffee. My issue is the way people leave the bar after they’ve used it.

As I see it, there are two types of people.

1.) Those who leave the bar as it was, or better, than when they arrived

2.) And those that contribute to what I would call, condiment bar entropy

Entropy is defined as “inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society.”

Look, we all know that at some point the barrista will have to come over and clean the bar. Fair enough… that’s part of their job.

But how some people scatter cinnamon and Equal and half and half all over the bar and then just walk away, is totally beyond me.

What goes through these people’s minds? They just too busy? Or maybe they just don’t care. Maybe they believe the $8 they spent on their tome-titled beverage entitles them to act like petulant children refusing to clean-up a spill.

As I see it, this is a real dividing line in society. It has parallels in the way people treat servers in restaurants, service people in hotels and manual laborers like janitors and housekeepers.

And quite frankly, you can tell a lot about someone by observing these types of behavior.

I know this is a social media and marketing blog, and I could go on and make a half-ass analogy (although I typically try to use my whole ass) about how the same type of people affect the new media marketing world. And there may be some validity in those comparisons.

But for now, just clean-up after yourself when you fix your coffee. Or maybe even, I don’t know, clean-up after those that don’t.

Might feel good to leave the bar a better place than you found it.

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New Marketing coffee shop, email, Marketing, Social Media, Starbucks