I’ve often thought my older relatives should try Netflix. But they don’t have a computer at home and I just didn’t see how it could work for them. They use the library computers in their home town, but I know they wouldn’t be comfortable doing the credit card thing online, much less at the library.

Then the other day my friend Ann was telling me how much her Dad was enjoying the Netflix subscription they had gotten him as a gift.  Having met Ann’s dad, who is in his 70’s, I wondered immediately how he was managing the online ordering and movie queue. Ann said, very matter of fact, “We do it for him.”  And he loves it. It’s like magic, a movie arriving in the mail. Recently he called Ann and asked, “Now tell me, really, how much is this costing you?” And when Ann told him, he said “Get outta here! Really?”  Everyone is tickled pink.

I had been thinking about how to get my relatives on Netflix for the last few YEARS, and now Ann’s story shows me an obvious solution.  I am thrilled, and I jump on the internet the next day to make it happen. On the Netflix site I click on gift subscriptions, but I just don’t see how I can sign up on behalf of my relatives. Happily, Netflix has a very visible 24/7 phone number for customer service. It’s good that this is 24/7 because I usually have time for these kinds of things after 11pm.  And I’m glad it’s visible because if I have to root around for a number to call, I never finish the thread.

I call and a super customer service representative (CSR) answers and says, “Oh ya! I know just what you want to do. I do that for my own parents.”  Great customer service:  24/7 phone help and I don’t think I even hit a menu, someone just answered. What’s more, he was immediately helpful, ensuring I could set up my relative and still get the one month free trial.  As I hung up the phone, I had one of those “Wow, a great customer experience” moments.

But then I thought: wait a minute: I’ve wanted to sign my relatives up for Netflix for years and I only found out about this by accident, the old word-of-mouth route. Lots of people know about this and clearly the CSRs do it all the time. But just as clearly, it’s a work around to their standard process. Here is what seems to be a reasonably common customer demand – managing a Netflix subscription for an older relative who doesn’t have a computer and/or is uncomfortable with the whole online ordering thing – that is still a workaround.

Why isn’t there a big red button on the website that says “Click here to Manage a Gift Subscription for An Older Relative” in marketing-speak? Why doesn’t the Netflix order process know about this? Why doesn’t’ the Netflix marketing process know about this? CSRs do. Customers do. Other customers like me want to know about it. This seems like a big opportunity for Netflix to improve how they capture customer needs and their CSR’s knowledge of the customer.

What could Netflix do? I don’t’ have any knowledge of Netflix’s internal systems, so I am guessing at what they might have or not have. But here are my thoughts on a couple ways they could close this gap.

One solution would be a social media platform where CSR’s submit workarounds they are doing for customers, where CSR’s can see what workarounds have been done already and vote or rate how useful or important these are for the customers they talk to. CSRs could also submit customer requests they pick up on through their calls, and earn recognition in the system for doing so. They could earn recognition also for looking at and rating other submissions. I encourage the enterprise 2.0 vendors in innovation platforms, social CRM and wikis to chime in here with more specifics.

Netflix is internationally known for the Netflix Prize, and it uses sophisticated data mining and analytics to improve the movie recommendations we all see in our Netflix accounts. A second solution could use data mining and analytics on the customer and order datasets. The ordering system knows when CSR’s are setting up two accounts with the same credit card and has information about the profiles of the accounts. It seems to me that there’s a big PATTERN waiting to be mined – probably more than one. I’d appreciate data mining and analytics vendors to chime in here with suggested solutions, too.

This is a great example of how companies can answer questions both big and small through the use of emergent intelligence. Emergent intelligence comes from people and data.

In an earlier post "What’s Wrong with Today’s Enterprise Software? [Emergent Intelligence]" I wrote:

Take a customer support example.  Text analytics detect a support issue brewing in the broad social media sphere. The company uses a social collaboration platform to collect information, find possible solutions, inform and update the field and support reps. Analytical applications derive a set of compliant options to address the issue that are the best fit for a specific customer and push those options out to the front line in near real time.

I wasn’t talking about Netflix at the time, but it’s not a bad fit.

I am waiting to hear how my relatives like Netflix. I hope they feel that same magic that Ann’s dad does when that DVD pops into their mailbox.