The “Bezos Effect” on Customer Experience. It’s hard to think of anyone who pushed for customer-centricity and a focus on experience more than Amazon founder and soon-to-be Ex-CEO Jeff Bezos.
Steve Jobs once remarked, “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology.” Bezos took this to heart. His vision was to become “Earth’s most customer-centric company.” Here are some ways he brought it to life:
ONE EMPTY CHAIR
Bezos had a peculiar practice. At every meeting, he mandated an empty chair at the table. That empty chair represents the customer. He never wanted to make a decision without a reminder of its impact on its customer.
TWO DAYS EVERY TWO YEARS
Bezos mandated that thousands of Amazon managers, including himself, attend two days of call-center training every two years.
TWO PIZZA RULE
Day One is the entrepreneurial mindset that kept Amazon on a continuous cycle of experimentation and innovation. Bezos reinforced being agile and productive with the two pizza rule. No meeting should be so large that two pizzas can’t feed the whole group.
Takeaway: The Bezos Effect is your need to be customer-obsessed. In his words, “Obsessing over customer experience is the only long-term defensible competitive advantage.”
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Stan Phelps walks the walk. He stands out in the sea of sameness by modeling his own Differentiated Experience (DX) message: Differentiation isn’t just about what you say, it’s about what you do and, more importantly, how and why you do it. Stan leverages his unique collection of 5,000+ case studies on customer, employee, and brand experience to engage audiences with informative learning-based experiences. He believes purposeful DX wins the hearts of employees and customers, and differentiation ultimately boosts loyalty, retention, referrals, and results.
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