Netflix's business opportunity

slideshare.net

6 points·male_salmon··4 comments

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.

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.

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.

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com