Want to be like Amazon? Treat Your Customers Like Kings.
While many companies consider Amazon to be the ultimate competitor, Amazon didn’t become the trillion-dollar retail and distribution behemoth it is today by focusing on what its competition was doing. Instead, it focused on exciting and delighting its customers.
Remember, Amazon started out selling books. Bookstores were its main competition. Amazon did not aspire to beat bookstores at their own game. Instead, Amazon created an entirely new game.
In a talk at the Economic Club of Washington back in September, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos told his audience, “The number 1 thing that has made us successful by far is obsessive-compulsive focus on the customer as opposed to obsession over the competitor.”
In fact, customer obsession is the very first of Amazon’s 14 Leadership Principles: “Leaders start with the customer and work backward. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.”
It’s this unrelenting drive to address customer needs that’s made Amazon “the everything store.” From day one, Amazon observed its customers, asked for their input, anticipated their wants and needs, and treated them with complete trust and respect. Amazon has been able to build –and scale – its legendary customer service by paying attention to customer behavior and delivering on promises so well that it changed the meaning and importance of “customer expectations.”
Amazon makes their customers “king.” They’ve proven the validity of this strategy by lapping up 50 percent of US e-commerce sales in 2018, per TechCrunch.
Nowadays, customers demand Amazon-like services, a trend known as “the Amazon effect.” Customers want to know where their orders are when they will arrive, and if there is a delay. Amazon does all that – and your business can too with the help of technology. To be able to meet customer needs, Amazon uses technologies to track and optimize shipments, giving visibility to customers so they know what is happening to their orders all along the supply chain.
To make customers king, businesses need to offer a technology-driven experience that gives visibility into transportation processes from order entry to proof of delivery. Shippers use TMS like Kuebix to find scarce capacity, analyze freight rates and secure transportation. Businesses can compare carrier rates side-by-side and choose the best rate that the shipment demands, ensuring quick and efficient deliveries to their customers. They can also provide their customers with real-time tracking and a level of visibility that can only be gained with technology.
