Fiber Optic at home: Verizon FIOS vs. Comcast provides a lesson in user experience design
I recently decided to put fiber optic broadband Internet into my home – Verizon FIOS. After a few months of use, I’m having a love-hate relationship with it. The data side of FIOS is awesome. I’m working on several big book projects, and I’m sharing files at blazing speeds that were what I might have expected over a local area network in my office just a few years ago. But if the data side of my relationship with FIOS is all love, I also decided to try them for TV, and this is where they just aren’t ready for prime time. Last night my wife was trying to find a movie to watch, so I went to their on-demand listings. Why am I using my laptop to check out movies? Because I first want to check out movie reviews before spending time watching a movie. If I haven’t gotten a good word-of-mouth review from a friend that I trust, I turn to RottenTomatoes.com to see if it’s worth my time.
First, Verizon wanted me to log-in to see the listings – which came after they tried to get me to subscribe – even though I’m already a subscriber. Can’t Verizon figure out that I’m on their network? I don’t use my Verizon email, so I don’t know my user name or password? And even if I did, why should I need to log in to see what movies they have available – is it some type of secret? What if I’m a prospective customer wanting to check out their selections. The Verizon people need to spend some time thinking as a customer. What would a current customer want to see? How can we easily deliver this information? Good design provides a great customer experience – bad design wastes customers’ time. With thousands of channels and on-demand offerings, they need to find a good way to present the information to me. The TV signal is good – in fact the HD signals are awesome, but I don’t care if the signal is good if I can’t figure out what to watch because of a bad user experience on their Web site. This goes to show that Web sites are as much about customer retention as they are about attracting new customers and how important UX and UI considerations are for your business.
Fortunately for Verizon, Internet broadband is my key interest… but if I was more into television, I’d be ready to scrap my FIOS and return to Comcast as the phone company. Verizon still has a bit to learn about delivering television, and their Web site could benefit from some UX design considerations.
