Netflix in need of a fix

At the time of writing this, the US online video service, Netflix is still attempting to recover from an outage. This is now the third day, that the company has been affected. They cannot send confirmations back to customers to have returned DVDs to them, nor process orders for new rentals. Ouch!

There have been no details, that I can see, as to what has caused the problems.  In a curious turn of events however, the streaming video service is up and online and still being able to service customers. Is this a case of the companies online business showing its worth versus the off-line business? Well maybe not, we have to remember the off-line (no pun intended) business is down, is due to ‘IT system’ issues. 

This is yet another reminder of just how dependent companies are on their systems. The implications are significant. The loss of revenue and hence, one would assume, profit. The inconvenience to the customer of not being able to get the films they wanted. All this ends up in a significant hit to the brand image – this can be seen in comments left on the company Blog site. A timely reminder to all of us, to ensure that we have a plan in place ‘just in case’. I am off to run a backup of my laptop!

August 15, 2008 | Filed Under Backup and restore, Customer service 

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