Amazon.com - Some things to learn
'We want to be earth's most customer-centric company,' says Amazon.com. Such mission statements are vacuous more often than not; however, in Amazon's case it's different. Let's consider some facets of this.
1. Kindle strategy: They sell their Kindle range of products at near-breakeven; the idea is to make money on the books and media products that customers consume, rather than on the device. This tends to align Amazon with the needs of customers.
2. Amazon Web Services: They have technology that proactively looks at the usage patterns of customers and suggests alternative plans that save costs for customers, even though it means a corresponding decrease in revenues for Amazon.
3. Amazon Prime: This is a programme wherein customers can pay US$ 79 to get 2-day free shipping for a year. Since the introduction of the programme, they've not raised prices while selection has increased significantly. For instance, third-party sellers who avail of the "Fulfillment By Amazon" programme are also eligible to be part of Amazon Prime.
4. Proactive refunds: Where Amazon is able to figure out that customer experience has been sub-optimal, they try to provide refunds proactively. For instance, if a customer's video streaming experience via Kindle Fire is poor, the company might refund a portion of the fees automatically.
5. Approach to customer service: Jeff Bezos' philosophy is that if a customer has to call customer service, it already means service has been sub-optimal; a happy customer is one for whom the buying and usage experience just works, without the need for manual remedial interventions. With this in mind, they try to get to root causes of problems and eliminate issues rather than take an ad-hoc approach.