I recently learned a great leadership lesson from Netflix, the company that offers online flat rate DVD and Blu-ray Disc rental-by-mail and video streaming through gaming devices.  We’ve been trying Netflix out for the past month and had an issue with them last week that did not allow us to watch anything online through our Wii.

We were disappointed, but did not think too much about it.  And then I received this in my inbox this morning:

I was completely blown away by their depth of customer service.  For all intents and purposes, Netflix is a web-based company that is fairly turnkey: they upload the movies and TV show, provide the proper coding, and as long as I am paying my monthly fee, the content is electronically sent to my house.  There is not too much human to human interaction.  And when something goes wrong, I would expect very little by way of acknowledgement.

But they not only acknowledged the problem, they went above and beyond to keep me as a customer; extending my trial period for another day because of the day of service I had lost.

Do we go this far in our companies to keep current and future customers?

We’ve all had problems with services or products within our own companies, and our customers have been the unwitting victims.  And when they bring the problem to our attention, we all usually address it and resolve it as soon as possible.

But do we actively pursue those customers who have had a product or service problem that never brings it to our attention? In other words, what is our strategy for keeping customers when our systems fail?

Someone at Netflix has built a system that reacts when service is interrupted or there is a failure, and is proactive in resolving the problem in an extremely timely manner.

Thank you Netflix, for being a customer service leader in your industry and for helping us to learn a valuable lesson in customer service and satisfaction.