@Strega wrote:
@AvsGunnar wrote:
@LittleBit71
I wonder if Roku may not have phone help anymore because some people choose to be rude.
Rudeness is often a problem, as are crank calls, people who call because they are lonely, and completely clueless people who expect their devices to work in power failures or need tech support to walk them through changing AA batteries or plugging in a charging cable (all real calls at my previous employer.)
This has tended to lead to a lot of cost containment measures such as automated assistants which people hate or off-shoring, which leads to complaints about accents and sometimes leading to the very poorly paid support people (who are just contractors for some contractor) realizing they can make much more money selling customer account information or directly scamming people.
Another option is to have real, local, easy-to-call tech support and raise prices. But it seems most people don’t shop for “good tech support” so this doesn’t work for most companies.
What you seem to be implying is customers that were never rude should blame those that were.
I have also worked phones to provide customer service and had to deal with each of the things you described. However, the cost containment measures you listed, while popularly used, are not the best method of dealing with rude people. These cost measures are usually selected regardless of if the customers were nice or rude. It also does not seem to be related to what the customer is willing to spend. I have seen the same cost cutting measures performed by enterprise business to business companies that are paid plenty for their products and services. Also, one of the most expensive smart phone manufacturers (who happens to also be a Roku competitor as well) which is known for its "good" customer service in return for the higher price had an issue called "batterygate." This clearly was poor management policies impacting what people received as part of their customer service. Some 2 million impacted customers later they apologized.
To better get an idea of Roku was cost saving due to rude customers, simply look at their yearly reports to the SEC. They bring up customer service in two places in 2019 10-K report:
If our efforts to build a strong brand and maintain customer satisfaction and loyalty are not successful, we may not be able to attract or retain users, and our business may be harmed.
Building and maintaining a strong brand is important to attract and retain users, as potential users have a number of TV streaming choices. Successfully building a brand is a time consuming and comprehensive endeavor and can be positively and negatively impacted by any number of factors. Some of these factors, such as the quality or pricing of our players or our customer service, are within our control.
Cost of platform revenue consists of advertising inventory acquisition costs, payment processing fees, third-party cloud service fees, content licensing fees and allocated personnel-related costs, including salaries, benefits and stock-based compensation for Roku personnel who support platform services, such as advertising and billing operations, customer service, and teams supporting our TV brands and service operator licensees. We anticipate that the cost of platform revenue will increase in absolute dollars.
Notice they say customer service is a factor under Roku's own control, not the control of rude customers. Also, on their list of platform revenue costs, providing customer service comes around tenth?
For 2020 10-K and 2021 10-K, they still state that customer service is a factor under Roku's control but no longer list it as a cost of platform revenue. So, did that reduce their overall costs?
The reports say it did not:
2020 10-K:
The cost of platform revenue increased by $240.5 million, or 92%, for the year ended December 31, 2020 as compared to the year ended December 31, 2019.
2021 10-K:
The cost of platform revenue increased by $320.7 million, or 64%, during the year ended December 31, 2021 as compared to the year ended December 31, 2020.
It is my belief that the pandemic disrupted how Roku delivers support. It is also my belief that before the pandemic the cost of getting a new customer was more expensive (advertising is at the top of their list) that the cost of retaining. Pandemic may have changed things for the bean counters in which it was easier to attract new customers that normally wouldn't be looking for a streaming player and be able to put less effort into retaining the existing ones. I don't think the change in equation caused by the pandemic will last forever.
If you are really interested on how to deliver good customer service in an age of customers getting rude, I recommend finding the book "@ Your Service" by Frank Eliason.
