The Art of Customer Service: Spotify
Making waves across the music business
It’s an explosive expression of humanity. It’s something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we’re from, everyone loves music.
— Billy Joel
For many years, the way I listened to music has evolved: from cassette tapes (yay 80s kids!) to CDs to iTunes/iPod to smartphone. My one core desire between all of these mediums was to simply have all my favorite music in one place, and as time has gone on, it’s become easier to make this a reality. In 2011, my husband introduced me to Spotify, and I was hooked. I loved the ease of the service and how convenient it was to have practically any and every song I wanted to listen to available at my fingertips. I happily dealt with the ads for a while, until I found that when I was driving for long periods of time, I wanted to have all my playlists at my disposal (instead of shuffle/radio mode that they allow under their free service).
It didn’t take me long to sign up for the premium plan, download it onto my iPhone and desktop, and I haven’t looked back since! The offline mode is one of my favorites, which allows you to save your playlists so that when you don’t have wifi or an internet connection, you can still listen to your music (I particularly love this feature for when we travel and my phone is in airplane mode). Will and I use Spotify so frequently that we even set up all our playlists for our wedding on it and convinced our DJ to sign up for it as well so we could send him all of our songs; it was so easy to send/add songs across all of our devices. Needless to say, it’s pretty obvious that I’m a Spotify evangelist and I try to convert people any chance I get.
Shortly after moving to Australia, I was looking through some of our subscriptions and trying to figure out which ones weren’t as necessary anymore. Netflix was automatically ruled out since it wouldn’t work here (although they did announce they are launching here in March!), among a few others. We realized after we got married that having two Spotify accounts was 1) pointless and 2) pricey. It was costing us approximately $19.98/month, and although it was highly worth it, considering we used it at home, work, while driving, etc., it still seemed strange that we couldn’t collaborate somehow. And then—as if Spotify read my mind—during the exact same week I was ready to give up my premium account, they released their Family Plan! In short, the Family Plan allows you to pay full price for one main account, and any linked accounts to the main account will be charged 50% of the normal price— essentially cutting our monthly bill by 75%! We can now be on one bill, listen to our own music, without any interruptions by ads or having to use each other’s accounts.
Unfortunately, my premium plan didn’t run out until later that month, so I wasn’t able to take advantage of this right away, as my coupon code was not working. Worrying that our account would be charged for both the family plan and premium plan, I reached out to Spotify’s support team on Twitter. It was over the Christmas holiday, so I wasn’t too expectant about an immediate reply. However, on Christmas Eve, I received a series of tweets from Spotify on rectifying the issue!
Shortly after, we took care of the issue via direct message (also over Christmas and the following few days afterwards); they cancelled my premium account, and resent a new coupon code to me to set up our family plan! Sure, I could have waited until the end of the month, but it was worth a try to see if I could get it taken care of before any unwanted charges or issues arose.
I was so pleased and impressed by Spotify and their customer service — particularly for taking care of such a minuscule issue of mine over a huge and busy holiday season. They were kind, prompt and very courteous, something that confirmed my love and loyalty to the product. When you have a great service, such as Spotify, and have loyal customers, it’s important to do what you can to take care of them and ensure their happiness. For the sake of this post, I actually just wanted to zone in on the importance of stretching your reach to help customers — even if it means sometimes extending your hours to include other time zones. This is most relevant for startups, when first beginning and establishing a client base; and also particularly relevant for larger companies whose social media presence may be one of their biggest forms of traffic when it comes to customer support.
This doesn’t mean you would need to have your employees working through the night, or even on holidays, but monitoring peak web traffic and when most customers are reaching out to you (ex. the evening after work or during the weekend) will be very beneficial. I’ve come across many companies today who hire remote workers throughout the world in order to tend to customers in different time zones, or even hire employees to work over the weekend (or perhaps one weekend day). It’s important to maximize on these opportunities because when customers (including myself) have pressing issues and reach a “busy signal” in a sense—such as calling outside of business hours—it drives us crazy. Of course, we have to be understanding, but it causes us to be stuck in a figurative rut with the product/service until it can be resolved a few days later.
Most of the time, customers won’t expect you to answer a tweet, for example, on a Saturday night at 10pm but if you did answer them right away and helped to resolve a complaint or a bug, could you imagine the reaction? How much more dedicated they could become to your company? Or the chain reaction if your customer retweets and lets their followers know? Or even if they call, expecting the company to be closed and reach your happy and willing voice on the other end? Or even a quick email back?
I’ve mentioned this in previous posts, but going above what is expected — no matter how small the issue is or even how pressing it is— it leaves a lasting impression on the customer. It is usually bad customer service experiences that people remember the most—that is, until they have an amazing one! So why not make that the goal? Something that will stick with them and want them to invest even more in your product (whether that’s telling their friends, or paying for a subscription). I know for a fact that we will be lifelong Spotify customers as they continue to impress my husband and I, and we could not imagine our daily lives without it! I encourage you in your business to think of ways to impact the customer that will keep them for a lifetime; try to keep Tony Hsieh’s words in mind: “even if it means making small sacrifices now to ensure long term success.”
Need ideas on how to extend your reach to your customers? Here are some helpful articles I’ve found:
Here are more articles I have written on customer service:
