There’s something to be said about a company that places a significant emphasis on qualitative customer service. Now, I’m not talking about a company with a massive customer service call center located somewhere in the world, I mean one that makes a customer’s concerns, comments, or questions feel heard, and the customer feels taken care of throughout the process of triaging a solution. Patagonia, for example, is incredible at taking care of their customers. If you buy a product from the brand, you have a lifetime guarantee that the jacket, coat, or beanie will hold up, and if, years down the line, the product breaks, Patagonia will take the steps necessary to repair your piece. Countless other companies exemplify this quality, but I fear that customer experience is falling to the wayside and is being replaced by instantly-gratifying online tech support or call centers.
We shall see how this continues, but for now, here’s what you missed in the news yesterday.
Hilton and Chill
Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc and Netflix today announced that they will be teaming up to create a more personalized travel experience by allowing guests to stream their favorite Netflix series, movies, and more on in-room televisions in Hilton’shigh-tech Connected Rooms, according to the official press release.
According to recent reports, Hilton currently boasts over 1,800 Connected Rooms across all of their properties, and intends to extend the technological offerings to tens of thousands of rooms in hundreds more hotels across the US.
“We know our guests want to feel connected while traveling, just as they do at home, so we’re giving them seamless access to their favorite Netflix shows, films, and specials while on the road. Inspired by 100 years of innovation, we continue to find new ways to meet the constantly evolving needs of our guests.”
–Noelle Eder, Executive Vice President and Chief Information and Digital Officer, Hilton
The collaborative agreement between Netflix and Hilton will, aside from bringing the N+C to the hotel experience, allow Netflix users to access their own Netflix accounts — not some customized Hilton version — so they can easily pick up from whatever episode of New Girl they left off on. Business jargon aside, a deal like this further extends Netflix’s goal of keeping consumers glued to their platform.
Google Is In L’Trouble
Earlier this week, France’s data protection division, known by the French as CNIL, formally announced that it had found Google’s (GOOGL) data-gathering methods to be directly in conflict with the European Union’s new set of privacy laws, the General Data Protection Regulation, according to several sources. Following CNIL’s findings, the organization slapped on a $57 million fine for the critically-acclaimed search engine behemoth.
The official language from CNIL’s statement read as follows:
“Users are not able to fully understand the extent of the processing operations carried out by GOOGLE. But the processing operations are particularly massive and intrusive because of the number of services offered (about twenty), the amount and the nature of the data processed and combined. The restricted committee observes in particular that the purposes of processing are described in a too generic and vague manner, and so are the categories of data processed for these various purposes. Similarly, the information communicated is not clear enough so that the user can understand that the legal basis of processing operations for the ads personalization is the consent and not the legitimate interest of the company. Finally, the restricted committee notices that the information about the retention period is not provided for some data.”
–CNIL Statement
