I hope so. I mean, your company and what you do rely on the integrity you provide to your customers. Just think if you were perceived as another Bernie Madoff?! Ugh!
In a recent article in CareerJournal.com, Stephen Covey stresses that you should (1) learn the skills that will earn you greater trust; and (2) don’t over promise what you can deliver. Particularly during these lean times with less resources and short personnel, that is great advice.
Categories: Public Relations · Vision · Work
Netflix had the week from hell. First of all, I am not a movie fanatic, so I don’t use the service. I know people who do and they swear by it. I have gone to other brick and mortar stores to find videos for my sons. Only to be frustrated that the movie was rented and there was a waiting list. So, I’m an advocate of Netflix innovation and service.
With their biggest service disruption ever, impacting 8.4 million subscribers, Netflix delivery system was down last week. In March, a one-day outage caused movie shipments to be held up for 11 hours; some made it out, some didn’t. In July 2007, the company suffered an 18-hour power outage.
Last week during the chaos, Netflix was slowly getting the shipping back on track, but only to mail out movies to some customers that were already ordered and in the hands of customers. One customer calls to inform customer service, only to get a recording to call another number (always a bad thing to make your customers call number, after number, after number…). By Friday morning, Netflix blog reported that orders and shipping were getting back to normal operations, and offering a 15% credit to customers’ next billing statement. Another post 12 hours later thanks all Netflix customers for their patience.
Let’s look at the events from last week:
1. Outage.
2. Delayed shipping.
3. Problems reaching customer service by customers, due to so many customer calls (can you imagine?!!).
4. Delivery back on track and posting such on the company blog.
5. Thanks customers for patience on the company blog, with shipping even occurring on Saturday (a deviation from the company norm to ensure delivery).
I believe that Netflix did all it could under the circumstances. However, I would hate to be in the inside lookout out (looking back at other outages, there must be a lot of finger pointing going on!).
What is Netflix plan so that this does not happen again? Customer service gets the brunt of the disgruntled customers. How will customer service be given the flexibility to ensure that there is customer retention following this episode?
There are recovery steps that Netflix may take (should take, are taking – who knows?!) over the next several weeks:
1. Create an incredible offer right now for new customers to join. It is a known fact that once something like this happens, it is unlikely to happen again. Say so right on the website and have it come from the CEO, Reed Hastings.
2. Give customer service the flexibility to provide incentives to current and prospective customers over the next month. Let them do whatever it takes to keep a customer. Free movies for a week?
3. Make sure that, internally, customer service is awarded or acknowledged for its efforts. Provide an incentive program for staff for retaining customers over the next three months – and getting new customers to join.
4. Request that IT put a plan together a backup plan so that outages are a thing of the past, with one contingency after another.
Lastly, pray it doesn’t happen again! Otherwise, after three strikes, Netflix is out!
Categories: Business in general · Public Relations
Due to the fumbled housing market, more and more employees are considering not to relocate, for fear of taking a huge hit on their homes and taking a loss. But, in a recent USA TODAY article, employers are paying more to get reluctant employees and new hires to sell their homes and relocate for work.
I find this hard to believe. What I have been seeing is that, in order to keep the budget on the cheap, businesses often look for candidates locally. That is a huge mistake. You need to have a good pool of candidates to fill the position. Otherwise, you are going to be faced with filling the position, just for the sake of filling the position.
Although some companies will let new hires work remotely (particularly if they have long commutes) other businesses won’t consider that. In fact, I have found that many managers see that as a downfall – they need to have that person physically in the office, regardless whether performance is an issue or not. Why is that? Is it a control thing? If you hire the right people, they will perform regardless where they are located. Trust me on this one.
Categories: It's all about the people · Jobs, Careers, Work · Public Relations · Work
If you’re not from Maine, you probably are not aware on how our home grown giant retailer, LL Bean, was among other major distributor of catalogs, (or magazine publishers, like Hearst), to do business with paper suppliers who only practice sustainable environmental practices, rather than deforestation. It creates a domino effect on the paper suppliers. LL Bean made a smart move.
Categories: Marketing · Public Relations
Every company needs to plan for the next generation’s future, and have some sort of commitment to schools in order to play a role in education reform. Fact Company’s article on how the US public schools are in splinters is one major reason. I’m not sure if our future workers will be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.
Categories: Public Relations
