No Employee Suggestion, No Amazon Prime

亚马逊 Prime is one of the most significant retail innovations of all time. Without Amazon Prime, Amazon would not be the dominant force it is today, and many of us would not experience our current way of life. Without utilizing an employee suggestion box app and listening to employees regardless of role, there would be no Amazon Prime.

The concept for Amazon Prime started when an Amazon engineer named Charles Ward shared his idea via Amazon's digital employee suggestion box app. At the time, Amazon offered customers free shipping on purchases of $25 or more, albeit with a longer delivery time. Ward believed that some customers would be willing to spend more and shop more frequently if they could join a buying club that offered swift shipping. Along with that, Ward also thought “Wouldn’t it be great if customers just gave us a chunk of change at the beginning of the year and we calculated zero for their shipping charges the rest of that year?”.

Bezos monitored the suggestion box and saw Charlie's suggestion. He seized on the idea and pulled together a group of executives in the boathouse at his Medina home in November of 2004. He told them to come up with a proposal by Amazon’s next earnings call, which was at the end of January.

In order to get this task done in around a handful of weeks, Bezos gave the team permission to poach colleagues from any division in the company. So the team printed a bunch of T-shirts with the front saying “Futurama” and the back saying “Shipping in 6 weeks or less. Guaranteed.” They then began taking engineers from other project teams, leaving the team with one of these shirts to enhance the buzz surrounding the project. As Rob Lendvai put it, "Your team literally saw you disappear — like you were no longer in your seat and they had no idea why. It was not a common thing. Amazon was not like that."

From there, this team worked insane hours to bring the project to life. At the height of the project, members like former senior UI designer David Gellman were working an astonishing 110 to 120 hours per week. At the end, Bezos came up with the perfect name we're all familiar with. He said “all-you-can-eat premium shipping, call it Prime”. The first of its kind service then launched in February of 2005, priced at $79.00 per year.

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DirectSuggest Named Inc. Magazine 's Employee Suggestion Tool To Speed Up Your Feedback Loop

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The Seattle Times