What Jeff Bezos Says About Customer Service

The latest results from the American Customer Satisfaction Alphabetize reveals Amazon.com as the reigning and undisputed champ in both Net retailing and across the entire department in overall customer satisfaction. Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos perhaps more than any business leader has taken the philosophy of truly caring for the customer and ushered it into the digital era. Bezos has built a company from the ground upward purely based off of the unbending, unyielding philosophy of serving the customer across all departments. With a 164 meg Amazon customers, few would argue Bezos as the central builder of edifice an authentic, customer-centric visitor.

1. Don't Just Listen to Your Customers, Sympathize Them

"Everyone has to be able to piece of work in a telephone call center."

Equally part of a training session each year, Jeff Bezos asks thousands of Amazon managers, including himself, to attend two days of call-center grooming. Most likely this was a doctrine borrowed from the U.Due south. Marines equally all marines, regardless of rank, are trained to be a rifleman starting time. Nevertheless, the incentive here is for managers to immediately exist placed in the mindset that Amazon'south philosophy is almost listening, and about chiefly, understanding the customer. It's piece of cake to listen to customers. However the beginning step of every employee must exist to understand them and their needs in club to successfully better the organization.

2. Serve the Needs of the Customer

"Nosotros're not competitor obsessed, we're customer obsessed. We start with what the customer needs and we piece of work backwards."

The Kindle tablet came into being purely defined by customers' desires rather than engineers' preferences and personal preferences. What was remarkable was that Bezos hardly faltered in creating a product built for the customer fifty-fifty after information technology took years to construct the right hardware. One finance executive in particular learned quickly of his philosophy when he asked Bezos how much he was prepared to spend on the Kindle project, where the CEO quickly replied: "How much exercise nosotros have?"

Business organisation leaders must never devious from the overall fact that the customer pays the wages at your company (an one-time Henry Ford quote) make up one's mind what they need and work to serve them. During the next evaluation of a production or service squad, finish thinking about how you tin can make the product or organization better and start thinking about how you tin make your customers more successful.

3. The Empty Chair: The Nearly Of import Person in the Room

"Focusing on the customer makes a company more resilient."

Even during the fledgling days of Amazon, Bezos worked hard to institute the philosophy of a company that obsesses over their customers from top to bottom. An overwhelming effigy that used to always fix the tone of his meetings was "the empty chair." Early on, Bezos brought an empty chair into meetings and informed his top executives that they should consider that seat occupied by their customer, "the most of import person in the room." Throughout these meetings, a different weight was held on all decisions every bit the invisible only articulate presence of the customer was ever deemed for.

4. Never Settle for 99%

"Nosotros're not satisfied until it's 100%."

In the December of 2011, Jeff Bezos was "very proud" that Amazon was able to hitting the unfathomable goal of delivering his promise to go packages to 99.9% of his customers before Christmas. No small feat transporting millions of packages worldwide and missing their mark on a handful of deliveries in just a few, brusk nights. To Bezos, though, there is still room for improvement as he stated: "Nosotros're not satisfied until information technology's 100%."

As your client service team continues aiming to striking response fourth dimension goals to customers and improve satisfaction ratings never settle for 99% – e'er shoot for 100. In today'due south historic period, customers are talking to one another and are referring companies that provide a more satisfactory customer experience. And they're paying more to ensure this (just await at Amazon).

v. Respect Today's Customer

"If you brand customers unhappy in the physical earth, they might each tell six friends. If yous make customers unhappy on the Net, they tin each tell 6,000."

As 1 of the original ecommerce pioneers, there can be little argument that Bezos firmly understands the authority of today's customer. Today's client is listening to peers, researching heavily online and posting complaints on social media – irresolute everything business owners thought they knew about client relationships.

Put in the piece of work and enquiry and so that you fully sympathise your client base and never take them for granted. Respected brands have fallen high from their perches due to poorly mishandled situations in dealing with an unhappy client. Make sure to have a articulate and concise programme with how yous deal with bad reviews or complaints from customers (it'southward going to happen). Above all else, no matter how frustrated you may be with a client who takes a complaint to the Internet, never fail to respond and always say thank you lot.

half-dozen. Strive to Create a Client-Centric Company

"If we can arrange things in such a style that our interests are aligned with our customers, then in the long term that will piece of work out really well for customers and information technology will work out really well for Amazon."

One important marvel that remains is that of all of the great client service that Amazon provides, it still doesn't explain why they're making billions of dollars in sales each quarter. Like organizations like Costco and Target demonstrate their world-class customer service as well—yet their combined market capitalization trails Amazon's by $98 billion.

The secret sauce to Amazon'due south success was Bezo's ability to create a customer-axial company. All of his departments throughout Amazon are completely information-driven based upon the success and failures of the customer experience. It allows him to take risks to introduce and make difficult decisions because he has the concrete testify to make up one's mind what is best for the customer and ultimately, what is best for the visitor. In an interview with Forbes magazine, Bezos said of his customer-centric company: "We don't focus on the eyes of the adjacent quarter; we focus on what is going to be good for customers. I recollect this aspect of our culture is rare."

7. Don't Be Agape to Apologize

"Nosotros will employ the scar tissue from this painful mistake to aid make better decisions going forrard, ones that match our mission."

Over the by nearly two decades, Amazon has held a steady footstep of positive press due to their manufacture-altering company and peachy client service. However back in 2009, the foundations of the online book mogul were shook when they remotely deleted copies of the books "1984" and "Animal Farm" from users' Kindles. The incident prompted an outcry of Internet users to see the nighttime, "Large Brother" side of Amazon – 1 that Bezos had worked difficult to steer articulate of. Amazon apace made an apology with the usual dry and inhuman argument from the press team. But what actually turned people back towards Amazon, was an informal and heartfelt apology from Jeff Bezos:

The lesson that can be learned here is that the problem was rapidly forgotten and even met with praise for Jeff's power to take responsibility for his mistake. Take a look at some of the replies from customers:

Apologizing is embarrassing and frustrating – it's an open up surrender that yous screwed up one time out of the thousands of positive contributions you accept made to your customers. However, a solid, heartfelt apology is truthful representation that your organization cares about the needs of the customer. That itself speaks louder than any multi-million dollar advertisement bulletin.

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Upon reading this post, I am not expecting you lot to come down Mount Sinai with the 10 Commandments. There is no immediate activity that needs to be taken from these lessons. Just the ability to look at your business and its customer service in a different low-cal. How do yous view your customers now? Accept this equally an opportunity to learn from a man who has fully grasped what it means to build a customer-axial visitor.

This is a repost from my original article on the Salesforce Blog in June 2013, vii Customer Service Lessons from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos .