Netflix Finally Listens to Customers

Netflix changed its mind and business plan again (which is the third major announcement in only four months) this week after receiving a horrible response by customers about all of the company’s upcoming changes.

Last month, the company announced splitting into two businesses including: Netflix, which would stream movies and TV shows online, and Qwikster, which would mail movies to customers.

The addition of Qwikster came across as a last minute, unorganized decision made by the company. I say this especially because of the Twitter handle issue. The company failed to research the use of the name Qwikster, which was a huge fail on their part.

@Qwikster on Twitter is an avid pot smoker, enjoys using unnecessary (misspelled) curse words, and wouldn’t know how to use correct grammar if it hit him in the face. If these reasons aren’t good enough, then check out some more of his tweets. You will see firsthand why you wouldn’t want him to be the face of a company.

A week after launching the new Qwikster DVD mailing business, Netflix canceled it. Instead of separating the two businesses, Netflix simply is keeping the two plans on one website, the Netflix website (which only makes sense). This basically means customers only need to have one account to use both services (which also only makes sense plus it’s more convenient).  

With raising prices and this mess of a new business plan, Netflix stock lost a whopping 63 percent of its value in the last three months. On top of this decrease, they are also expected to lose an estimated 600,000 subscribers out of 24.6 million by the end of this year.

Even though the number of canceling subscribers seems high, there are even higher hopes for the future of Netflix. With the new (and much improved) business plan focusing on online streaming, experts project the amount of subscribers to increase by about three times by 2017.

Even though they are expected to increase the amount of customers, right now Netflix needs to focus on their brand image that they single-handedly damaged. With the price increases and the change of business plans being poorly communicated to subscribers, their reputation will take time to repair.

They do have some great things going for them as a company, because they constantly try to make innovations in order to keep up with technology constantly changing. Plus, this is an excellent opportunity to shine now that they are in the limelight.

Netflix is quick on their feet (but quick to make hasty decisions apparently) so; they should definitely capitalize on the fact that they heard the negative feedback from consumers and immediately responded. The company took into consideration what subscribers were saying and apologized and changed their business to better fit the needs of the customers.