Carrie Garzich
Washington DC metro area information architect and occasional blogger, with interests including personalization, the paradox of the active user, social apps/media, mapping and wayfinding, and rich Internet applications.
Blog
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Netflix profiles
My favorite blog right now is The Consumerist, which features a nice combination of consumer news and customer service tales of woe.
One of the stories they covered this week was Netflix's decision to remove its customer profiles feature, presumably to help simplify the site and free up more room for new features. Profiles are used only by a small portion of Netflix users, so it seemed like a good decision.
The problem is, for that small portion of users, profiles were central to their Netflix experience. They allowed husbands and wives and kids to maintain separate queues within the same account, managing their DVDs independently. Enough of them wrote and called Netflix that the company reversed and is now keeping profiles.
Like many Consumerist posts, the comments are quite interesting. Kudos to Netflix for listening to customers. For the rest of us in the ecommerce world, it's a reminder that the numbers aren't the whole story when we're trying to evaluate whether a feature stays or goes.
One of the stories they covered this week was Netflix's decision to remove its customer profiles feature, presumably to help simplify the site and free up more room for new features. Profiles are used only by a small portion of Netflix users, so it seemed like a good decision.
The problem is, for that small portion of users, profiles were central to their Netflix experience. They allowed husbands and wives and kids to maintain separate queues within the same account, managing their DVDs independently. Enough of them wrote and called Netflix that the company reversed and is now keeping profiles.
Like many Consumerist posts, the comments are quite interesting. Kudos to Netflix for listening to customers. For the rest of us in the ecommerce world, it's a reminder that the numbers aren't the whole story when we're trying to evaluate whether a feature stays or goes.
Labels: Netflix
posted by Carrie G #
11:51 AM
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