Everyone knows the cliche “Customers come first”. But few businesses live that credo. In several rounds of interviews with customers for a couple major corporate products, we’ve encountered an assumption among many interviewees that companies are out to screw the customer. People simply don’t trust companies’ motivations. No, people don’t think companies are going to genuinely rip them off — for example, they trust the checkout process; they trust giving them their credit card. But they still sense they will somehow be getting a raw deal.
From what I’ve seen, this paranoia is blown way out of proportion. But though companies may not be out to screw you, there’s little chance they really understand what you want.
Below is an excerpt from an article in this Sunday’s New York Times called “Put Buyers First? What a Concept”. Basically it started with the author wowed by the fact that Amazon fixed a mistake that wasn’t even their own: they sent the author a replacement PlayStation 3, even though it was his silly neighbour who had signed for the original package, and then left it in the hallway of the apartment building (where it promptly disappeared).
But the point isn’t that this guy had a happy Christmas. The point is the Amazon corporate ethos it reveals. Here’s the relevant bit from the article:
It is almost impossible to read or see an interview with Mr. Bezos in which he doesn’t, at some point, begin to wax on about what he likes to call “the customer experience.” Just a few months ago, for instance, he appeared on Charlie Rose’s talk show to tout Amazon’s new e-book device, the Kindle. Toward the end of the program, Mr. Rose asked the chief executive an open-ended question about how he spent his time, and Mr. Bezos responded with a soliloquy about his “obsession” with customers.
They care about having the lowest prices, having vast selection, so they have choice, and getting the products to customers fast,” he said. “And the reason I’m so obsessed with these drivers of the customer experience is that I believe that the success we have had over the past 12 years has been driven exclusively by that customer experience. We are not great advertisers. So we start with customers, figure out what they want, and figure out how to get it to them.
Anybody who has spent any time around Mr. Bezos knows that this is not just some line he throws out for public consumption. It has been the guiding principle behind Amazon since it began. “Jeff has been focused on the customer since Day 1,” said Suresh Kotha, a management professor at the University of Washington business school who has written several case studies about Amazon. Mr. Miller noted that Amazon has really had only one stated goal since it began: to be the most customer-centric company in the world.
It all sounds so obvious. But the simply reality is that very few businesses really practice this. If you genuinely focus on your customers, you will stand apart from the crowd.