WSJ Headline – August 3, 2019
Lexis/Nexis is a poster child for a new WSJ article: “Everyone Hates Customer Service. This Is Why. Technology lets companies see how badly they can treat consumers, right up until the moment they bolt.” See WSJ article, August 3, 2019, by Sharon Terlep. For those who do not subscribe, I posted a copy online under the fair use doctrine.
The article explains the knowing failures of many tech companies who knowingly provide awful service to save money. It’s disgusting to read how precisely they can and do measure how bad they are, but well worth the time to read.
A premise of the article is that companies figure out how far they can fail before customers quit. From recent personal experience, I can say that RELX – Lexis/Nexis has not figured out the line for its online caselaw services to law firms. That’s why I recently canceled the $6,000 per year online caselaw contract my small law firm had for the last several years.
In short, they knew their online service offering (Lexis/Nexis Advantage) had an online sign in problem existed because their web site refused to play well with/ coordinate with password keeping software (Dashlane) of the sort we are forced to use because corporate America bolixed cyber security. The company, however, did not warn customers, put up useless error messages, took hours to respond to emails, and had endless voice prompts on calls, followed by useless advice. After they finally admitted the problem, they delayed fixing the problem.
So, I went out looking for an alternative. I found a much cheaper service that’s equally good on caselaw and statutes. Sadly, it means I also lose an actually valuable service (Mealey’s Litigation Reports ) but I refuse to pay $6k per year to such an awful company. I expect “cord cutting” ultimately will ruin Lexis/Nexis because, other than Mealey’s (which it bought), its people have not figured out how to do anything new and valuable unique and valuable now that caselaw and statutes are commodity items.