Customer Reviews

The Amazon Experience: Amazon Raises the Benchmarks for the Offline World (Killer Platforms)

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Chunka Mui's Essay, Amazon Raises Benchmarks for the Offline World, certainly makes me look forward to the rest of his essay series. This piece elucidates the aspects of Amazon's outstanding customer experience and examines the payoff the company has gotten from its controversially massive investment in both online and offline infrastructure.

As any reader of Mui's previous work already knows, he has a gift for breaking down a complex issue, in this case the why and how of Amazon's ongoing evolution as the standard by which customer service and customer experience will be measured for any business, whether online or offline, retail or otherwise, into easily digestible components. In this essay he breaks down the Amazon Experience into seven key lessons that allow managers to compare their own businesses to Amazon's and begin to examine how they match up. In particular, Lesson 3: Enhance Confidence With Customer Reviews is the most succinct defense and justification of customer reviews and ratings, good and bad, I've ever seen. Chunka provides the reason for allowing bad reviews, still an ongoing point of sensitivity in the online world, particularly for offline companies trying to bolt an online capability on to their businesses.

While I think the piece is worthy for any manager involved in customer service as well as any small business owner with an online presence, I have two small criticisms of the piece. Both are in the form of questions that to my mind go unanswered. First, while he is correct that the bank he refers to in the introduction (an amusing anecdote about some record keeping gone awry), though not in direct competition with Amazon, is impacted by the customer expectations that are developed because of Amazon. I couldn't help but sympathize with the bank. Said bank would prefer that its customers compare it to the service levels provided by other banks not to the service levels of Amazon. Chunka implies that this will hurt them but, if they are offering the same or superior service to other banks, how does it hurt them? The customer may be dissatisfied because they have had better online experiences elsewhere, but it's not like there's a better banking alternative available. Second, Amazon incurred roughly $1.4 billion in debt to take full control of the customer experience. That's an investment that is out of reach for most companies and I would like to have seen some suggestions for how a business might begin to approach that without putting that much at risk and/or embarking on an overly ambitious project that drowns itself in its own huge scope. As with the previous example, I think answers are implied but not explicit.

Then again, this is an eleven page essay and my criticisms above stem primarily from the fact that it isn't an entire book. Which brings me back to my original point. This insightful and thought provoking piece has certainly inspired me to examine how to apply the lessons of Amazon to my own clients and makes me look forward to reading more.

I enjoyed reading the Killer Platforms Essay. The examples that Mui uses to illustrate his points are great. Everybody can relate to the examples and the points he make are made crystal clear. From a business side, any service based company that operates on-line or thinking of making the move on-line should read this book. The model that Amazon provides isn't a universal solution that everyone should follow but it demonstrates the approach that should be taken. Mui breaks it down into 7 areas that contribute to Amazon's success.

The `search' Function

Personalization

Customer Reviews

Customer Satisfaction

Customer Feedback/Reviews

Customer Referral Programs

Partnerships

Each of these ideas look like common sense and you may think all business do them. But, these factors are what made Amazon an on-line retail giant. The examples taken from the Amazon model show how these areas can be used to create a completive advantage and, what is called, brand equity.

Even though Amazon experienced great success doesn't mean a business following the same model will share the same result. Mui addresses this by using the Amazon model as a benchmark and formulates questions for a business to ask itself.

Good book, very easy reading.

This article is wonderful. Chunka has such a nice, readable style that it's easy to cruise along, enjoying the article, and only later realize that you've learned something important. His central point to banks is that the best online experience is what sets online expectations, not BANKING online experience, or banking through other channels. Amazon sets the online bar high.