Netflix to customers: Profiles not going away.

Netflix recently announced that the profiles feature which allows customers to maintain multiple queues within a single account was going to be retired.

Now they've changed their minds.

It would be easy to frame this as a simple matter of a company listening to its customers and reacting in an appropriate way. Every Netflix customer I know was unhappy with the plan to eliminate profiles. But Netflix's real mistake seemed to be how and what they announced about their plan.

To paraphrase Netflix, the change was for customers' benefit. Beyond that, they didn't explain how this would benefit customers. And that, I suspect, is what set off a strong reaction, particularly when customers discovered that email isn't part of the Netflix customer service experience (try finding a simple way to email the company).

Lesson: When announcing a service change that's likely to be controversial, offer a detailed explanation for the change, don't focus on vague future benefits, and don't assume that "trust us" is enough.