

Netflix's business opportunity - male_salmon
http://www.slideshare.net/reed2002/netflix-business-opportunity

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frossie
Slide 21 I found particularly interesting in that they are testing micro-
innovations by releasing them to specific user segments.

I'll say upfront that this is a great idea, but as a longtime Netflix
subscriber I have to say the "satisfaction" polling I occasionally receive
seems a bit too simple for such a purpose. For example they ask you how the
quality of your stream was, and on HD content I do have to say "unwatchable",
but if they are using it to triage software improvements, I wish they was also
a chance to say "but I know my broadband is beyond sucky and I didn't really
expect anything better than that".

In other words what matters is not just satisfaction, but satisfaction as
compared to expectation.

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male_salmon
I have no direct knowledge of how we use that survey, but I suspect that an
outlier such as yourself would not affect the results of the survey. If there
is a wide-spread drop in quality, I think the survey would pick that up. It's
hard to design the perfect survey though, but I'll see if the powers-that-be
can improve the survey.

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frossie
BTW one of the nice things about netflix is how well it treats its outliers
:-) For example for ages I patiently filled in the "when did your DVD get to
you" survey not expecting anything better being out in the boondocks (Hawaii)
and them to my astonishment, Netflix opened a shipping depot in Honolulu.

And then there was the "multiple queues" incident where the company agreed to
keep the feature even though only a relative small percentage of subscribers
really used it.

It's a good way of doing business.

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male_salmon
Also, we're hiring: <http://www.netflix.com/Jobs>

