"Good CX" and the Amazon Paradox

Over the past couple of years, when talking to a number of CEOs and senior executives across a vast array and variety of global companies about what Customer Experience (CX) can do for them (and their business), there seems to be a consensus that CX is “a good thing.” ("CX is good!" -- take it for what you will...)

That being said, it remains that there is no real impetus to “put the proper work in” to vault CX to the forefront of most companies agendas and/or global core strategy. (and yes – there is a significant amount of work to be done, it is not particularly “easy” in business terms, but if done correctly/well, the returns are exponential across the entire scope of the business.) 

With all that, CX is still essentially considered a “nice to have” in business terms, rather than a central core to the future success of the business.

For all the “dialogue of the need for good CX” by companies, the prevalent talk around the discipline of CX doesn’t match the actions required to make a set of positive outcomes possible. 

The central problem seems to boil down to the perception of what CX is and how it operates in a successful environment – yes, it indeed costs time, budget and a significant amount of work from all departments and interactions across the entire enterprise to be fruitful – and it is “consistently evolutionary” -- in that CX is never complete.

It is not, and never shall be, a “PR exercise” either – as some companies have learned about talking a good CX game in the press about the future role of their customers in the business – some even appointing senior people in CX-focused roles at the C-Suite level (and giving them no substantive power to make the required changes to make CX flourish) -- and ultimately following up with abysmal results of all types towards those same customers when nothing actually changes for them, the employees, the company or the bottom line.

Lost in the mire of these types of failures, the potential returns to the business can be exponential if CX is done well (the right attitude, the right resources, the right people, the right frameworks, etc.) – not only to the financial aspect in terms of sales, but provides significant returns across the scope of the entire business (recruiting, employee engagement and retention, customer satisfaction, reduced operating and marketing costs, improved product development, etc.)

I have shouted this particular point from the rooftops for well over two decades – and the message has yet to really sink in for a variety of reasons it seems – but I shall state it here yet again:

CX has a variety of different “costs” to a business – but CX, done well, is a genuine and valuable investment in the entire business. It is clearly not a “sunk cost”, nor should it ever be perceived that way.

So, I referenced Amazon in the post title – and readers may wonder why I’ve done that but have yet to mention them here. 

Like most people who do one form or another of CX, I regularly cite Amazon as a model for "good CX and the benefits entailed within” – or alternatively the “gold standard for the marrying of CX to the core global business philosophy.”

The reason I do that may be a bit different to most CX “practitioners” though – and it comes from a personal standpoint.

I happened to live in Seattle in 1998-2000 while working on various global projects for Microsoft (amongst others) – when it was publicly announced during that period that Amazon had “at most, three months cash before they would have to declare bankruptcy – and would soon disappear off the face of the earth.” 

Now this was somewhat common at the time for “internet companies” at the time (think Pets.com, Broadcast.com, Lycos, Webvan, Boo.com, etc.) 

The difference is that Jeff Bezos proposed a “radical approach” to keeping his company alive – rather than the expected “dumping a load of additional VC investment into the company and hoping for the best” – he pivoted from the expected typical approach and went with:

Orientating and prioritising the needs of the customer above all else as the fundamental business viewpoint of Amazon.

This stance has taken many different forms throughout the history of the company – but has seen them go from the edge of bankruptcy (and impending footnote irrelevance like the earlier listed companies) to the second richest corporation in the world (and soon to pass Apple undoubtedly given the breadth and depth of numerous products and services that Amazon has in the marketplace on a global scale) – all within a 20 year period.

For Amazon, “Customer Experience” is not a department to be squirreled away in some deep, dark corner of the business (be it operations, strategy…or the current fad amongst companies – “marketing.”) 

It is and should be, the central tenet of how the entire business operates from start to finish. At Amazon, there is no “Customer Experience Department” because everything they do revolves around the customer from start to finish (they are one of the few companies that can actually have this set-up currently due to the path of their growth over the years. For most companies, they will need to have some sort of dedicated department and set of resources until the CX path is fully ingrained throughout the entire company.) 

It’s why a customer can still email Jeff Bezos directly (jeff@amazon (dot) com) with a complaint and someone in his office will get back to you within 48 hours to propose a solution that meets your satisfaction. How many companies currently can you email the CEO of a multi-national corporation and not only get a response in short order, but get a practical solution worked out with a real person, that also meets your specific needs?

Of course, none of this is actual news – particularly for those who are interested in incorporating the benefits of CX in their business (there is a comment about “dabbling in the field of CX” at companies -- and how CX is not an activity to “dabble” in as it already shows the obvious lack of commitment to the cause – but that is for another day….)

Having a number of friends and colleagues in the Seattle area who worked for Amazon at the time, I heard all the “tectonic shifts” that were occurring there at the time to realign all the current and future tasks to make sure that the customer was the “primary focus” of all their collective efforts. I got the sense from the many in-depth discussions that it was not an easy transition. But they did have an advantage at the time over their current competitors….

They were a smaller fairly localised outfit at the time – so companies that so desperately need a complete CX overhaul these days (looking at you financial services, telecom, airlines, automotive, FMCG, retail – amongst many others…) don’t have the advantage that comes from being smaller and nimble like Amazon was in the late 1990s.

It is not a lost cause in the existing marketplace though – as there are several basics one can glean from the transition that Amazon started 20 years ago into the current business philosophies of existing larger companies looking to implement truly effective Customer Experience programs. 

Initially, there must be a strong will to both start, and get the CX programs in place and completed through the "finish line" (in purely a metaphorical sense given there is no "finish" for CX if done properly.)

There must be the required sponsorship within the company to implement the many changes that will be required (ideally from the CEO and board of directors who understand the basics of the task at hand. Or at least a willingness to make the transition happen. There are valid and detailed necessary reasons for this particular requirement - some of them listed here....) 

You must have a collective of highly experienced people who can not only fix the current (and inevitable long list) of issues with the customers – but most importantly, “fix the problem, whilst flying the plane.” 

Which is to say, you don’t have to halt your daily operations to try and design and install a quality CX program (nor should you, as any type of “stoppage” in any department is going to be catastrophic to your business and the relationship with your customers – one need only look at all the instances that have come from the financial services arena over the past few years as a prime example.)

What must be done is to understand/change/integrate the current business methodologies, change the processes that are flawed/broken, insert new CX methods that will resonate with executives, employees and customers and make the company truly “customer/employee-centric” (for a start.)

With global corporations, you are going to need to have a group of people that not only understand the desires of customers (in multiple markets) – but also a Customer Experience group that understands how global companies operate and a deep knowledge of what complexities they face on a daily basis – be it through government regulation, different cultural requirements, varying methods of how sales, marketing, operations, etc. all work -- and how to integrate the current and future needs of the customer in all of them. 

There is a laundry list of risks and concerns when trying to integrate something as multifaceted as Customer Experience with the diverse needs of a matrixed, multinational corporation and all the requirements contained within (people, process, departments, responsibilities, etc.)

The problem with all of this is that these people generally don't exist within the walls of a large company as it requires a variety of experiences that one can't accumulate at a Fortune 500 corporate entity. (But that is a post for another day - or perhaps written almost four years ago.)

The best way to display the positive effects of CX within a company? 

Initially, create a series of small stage projects that will help “prove” that CX can make money, increase sales, make employees jobs “easier” (most of that will come from empowering the employee to make the right decision towards the customer) and produce “happier” outcomes for often frustrated customers.

Use this initial foray as a “stake in the ground” to build out further projects that integrate successful Customer Experience into other areas of the company (different verticals, departments, bigger country markets, etc.) 

This stance will allow movement into different areas of CX (as Customer Experience is actually a huge "umbrella" of different and diverse responsibilities and disciplines that requires input and feedback from multiple departments) and allow for future (and larger) projects to meet less internal resistance based off the positive outcomes achieved in the recent past. Some might refer to this as "starting a positive momentum towards the ultimate long-term goal."

Once those smaller projects have been successful as well, it will allow the internal resources to start designing longer-term strategies to truly align the needs of the customer in conjunction with the particular needs of the company and its employees.

We'll dub this a "two-tier approach to Customer Experience Success -- working on parallel tracks -- to encompass both the short and long-term needs of the organisation." (if you will...)

Where has it generally gone wrong for companies and CX?

Corporations (partnering with the typical large global consulting firms who have sold them a “bunch of CX magic beans” process where Customer Experience is all apparently very effortless, simple and straightforward for the company to adopt, and have almost instantaneous “success” upon completion.)

The consultants will generally try to launch massive multi-tiered, multi-million pound/euro/dollar Customer Experience efforts to deploy over a number of years with no clearly defined strategy, installing large teams of inexperienced people to lead these endeavours, and no real understanding of the complexities at hand or even how the business runs at a base level within the marketplace. 

This will turn out to be hazardous to both the current state of the company, and what needs to happen in the near and long-term future to make Customer Experience efforts worthwhile. 

The consultants will typically bumble through efforts implementing “in-house solutions” -- internally defined highly generic processes from their employers gleaned from other clients that don’t match with either the needs of the specific client going forward and/or are so generic that they can’t work in meeting the needs of either the company or their customer base – both now and in the future.

A personal example of facing this same type of issue happened when I had a series of meetings with the UK marketing director of an FMCG company a few years ago. He was relatively new to the role having been transferred in from an emerging market from within the same company. 

Over the course of a few months, I spent a lot of time chatting, and particularly intensively educating him, on the possibilities of one specific aspect of CX work that they needed help with as part of my firm's “start small and build out from there” strategy. 

My firm would help them solve some of the issues around data collection and properly using data from their numerous promotions to inform future customer decisions for multiple departments – including marketing. 

After a few months of intensive discussions, he decided he did not want to move forward with the main piece of the project and I asked him why.

“It seems like it will be actual work – and I was hoping it was going to be an ‘off the shelf, it comes in one box’ type solution where I wouldn’t have to be all that involved in.”

Needless to say, he didn’t last very long in the role and was transferred back to another “emerging market” within the same company shortly after. 

I do know for a fact that he ended up spending a vast amount of money in his multi-million budget with a few large consulting companies and marketing agencies on a variety of somewhat obscure projects and getting limited (if any) results. Imagine he is not currently alone in that particular methodology of budget allocation, nor in seeing limited (if any) results per dollar spent.

Customer Experience faces a long uphill battle to remain (or is that gain?!?) actual relevance in the C-Suite. Amazon has shown that CX is the way forward for companies to gain real traction in the marketplace. 

Most companies don’t have the natural advantages that Amazon had during their exponential growth phase (that is currently still on-going) – but Bezos has shown that “good CX” works and the base methodologies are sound when fully committed and done correctly. What will be the tipping point for other companies to finally adopt the need for Good CX?

Thank you for reading this blog post, I hope you found it interesting and thought-provoking. I’d love to hear what you think so please feel free to add your comments, suggestions or other ideas below. You can find more content at www.ccoglobal.com/blog.

My name is Dan Collins -- CEO and Founder of CCO Global -- an international digitally-infused Customer Experience (CX) firm. I’ve been working in the “digital” sphere and CX on a global level for a number of Fortune 500 companies for 25+ years.

If you’ve any questions about improving customer experience, digital efficiency, employee engagement or CX organisational effectiveness, please get in touch. I’m on +44 (0) 7799 803 195; email at [email protected] and the company twitter feed at www.twitter.com/CCOGlobal.