A Tale of KDP & 15 Leadership Principles of Amazon

This is my experience with KDP and how KDP it displays a lack of 15 leadership principals that Amazon so passionately advertises to follow. Since it is a KDP story, let me begin it as such.

Once upon a time, there a concept in Amazon, called Amazon Scout. The aim was to pick the best book in the genre (had a good contest money too) and then later to push other books which did not violate the Amazon Rules to KDP. Win-Win!!!

Whoever thought of this to get KDP to a lot of budding authors did a marvellous job.

So, I enrolled in this Amazon Scout for my title Heir. Bingo, it was "Confirmed and Approved", and the campaign went live. 

Yeah! But I did not win. Amazon informed that I could launch it immediately on KDP platform.

Heartbreak, but instead of launching it immediately, thought of going thought it again and getting it edited before submission to KDP. Now let’s fast forward to 2019 when I submitted this book for KDP.

I wanted to take advantage of Contest by Hindustan Time, Pen2Publish and how Amazon KDP team messed with it.

That’s another story. Later if I have patience. So, in 72 hours, got to know that the content was in violation with content guidelines. Whatever that meant. Like a dutiful subject, I appealed. 

2 emails with same content on 1st and 2nd of December in reply to the question, “I would like to know the reason or clauses where the violation occurred.”

So, I waited for their operational window to open and I picked up the phone. Also, keeping a record, dropped a note of my conversation. And like a magic, on 4th December they reinstated it. Amazon KDP apologies for the inconvenience.

It was doing good. 51 reviews with 4 & 5 stars. I thought my life was taking a beautiful turn. I wanted to bring down the price of Heir – End of Innocence. Wanted to make it affordable to all in lockdown state that the world is in. And then Amazon KDP team’s auto bot (I am not sure if it is bot. Any human being of average intelligence would understand the query and answer the questions) thought to block it. And what follows is the attempt of the bot to become human by being egoist and adamant to defend its action as the right one.

After 5 replies that made no sense, strangely enough same reply was posted 4 times just to rub it on me. 3-4 promises of escalating it to the team to get answers were in vain. Over the call, they informed me that there were no notes which specified the violation.

And if content in violation, then how was it accepted in the first place.  For a change in price, the workflow should not get the entire book into review. Surely, the Process Enhancement Specialist in Amazon who talk about Frugality to Accomplish more with less can appreciate the need of 1 reply for all the queries. Why were there multiple answers to the same query with no value add? Do they have additional headcount? Everybody was passing the buck and was not owning. I was desperate to get some answers, and yet, it seemed that KDP content was an orphan revenue generating vertical with nobody taking the Ownership to sort and solve for the problem that a customer was facing. Yeah, and I have heard about Amazon living the concept of Customer Obsession. This is VOC – Voice of Customer, who happens to know a bit about Process Excellence. I have observed that the batch run and contents get uploaded in batches – like first change in Title, Cost and then the files get uploaded. Same way, can’t you divide the workflow into different streams which will not lock the other changes and save this kind of nuisance for the customers. It is not a rocket science, just a simple Invent and Simplify. I have told this as a feedback to the Customer Service representatives. Surely, they should not be limited by saying, we not invented it, so we will not simplify. Now back to our story. After 2 days, I got a response, which provided some information. 

The territories may be a problem though the selection was not incorrect, still I clarified as it was written in the email. 

And then all of a sudden Amazon’s KDP department thought that it is not in their principles to accept any correction. They have to prove that they are Right, A Lot. They perhaps understood it as not to disconfirm their belief. So, I received yet another copy paste answer to my query. Don’t know, if they were even inclined to Learn and be Curious about what the issue was for which a customer was calling twice in a day and following up with emails to keep a record of the discussion. They did not even read the email chain. And I was expecting them to Deep Dive to the core of the issue and to Deliver the Result. By this I mean a correction or further action on the clarification that I gave in response to their email. Not the same copy paste email which does not Earn Trust. Not by a long shot.  

Then another email on the same line. I swear, from the Customer Experience that I have, it seems that nobody in this department has a Backbone; Disagree and Commit or Insists on High Standards to provide to a customer a resolution. By this time, I had given up. I did not even care to reply to the insane bot that was replying me. Then out of the blue, I received another email. Was there a chance that someone was into the groove of Think Big and differently to look around the corners for ways to help and serve a Customer? Sadly No.  

Then again, I got a reply that did not make sense. Scrolling down, I found that it was answer to the question that I asked on 24th April.  The same copy paste material that had no value for me as a Customer who wanted few answers. Was it Bias for Action was prompting them to reply without extensive research! But a reply after 6 days without a research, can it be called Bias for Action? Or it is just a dire need for this department to Hire and Develop the Best. Till now my experience is that they have hired robots without AI and have not developed it beyond the Copy Paste Functionality. You be the judge of this. 

I did not even respond to this. Thankfully, someone was following the leads. And I got yet another reply. 

Then after 8 days, (while they promised a revert in 2 days). I got no information as what the problem was. When the content that was already approved and was live for 3 months, it was blocked for incorrect content, when the only revision was price. As they have right to be the judge of what is appropriate and what is not. Then what about the response about Territories and the follow up action that was asked of me? Which of the information is true? Who is responding to the customer? 

I did not get any answers even after 15 days. And I am wondering, can’t they create a different workstream for customer request for the following:

Edit eBook details -> This goes through the Review Process for Descriptions and Title, categories, territories, Volume etc. in a fast track if there is no change in Content that was uploaded. It needs a validation not total verification and the TAT – Turn Around Time could be 12 hours instead of 72 hours.  

Edit eBook Content -> This would require complete Review if the e-book details are also changed, if not, review for content, and not for e-book details or price. It can take 72 hrs, if it is coupled with ebook details change, else TAT could be reduced to 48 hours

Edit eBook pricing -> Does not need to go through any review process or wait time.

If time is money, you get to save 12 hours in your TAT.  

I am not suggesting any radical change, just for the 5S – Sort the requests into right workstream (Seiri), Straighten the flow of the request if there are multi-level of changes (Seiton), Shine out the unnecessary workflow that is not needed, make it waste free (Seiso), Standardization the process that Customers do not feel lost searching for answers. (Seiketsu) and Sustain the process by teaching the employees the empathy and importance of getting it Right the First Time. RFT (Shitsuke).

And if it is any indication of how much discomfort it creates across the Customer base that you have, do go through this calculation. I picked up 2 categories (Literature & Fiction and Romance) to see what is the impact that is for Customers across the globe triggered by the anarchical attitude of Amazon’s KDP team.

Assumptions:

x% these titles are non-unique, related in Lit & Fiction – 60%

y% of those titles were self-published under KDP – 40%

z% of titles need changes in a month – 10%

a% of titles need changes and get stuck in review Process in a month – 5%

Using my example for TAT

Time taken to (not to) resolve – 15 days

No of email/communication – 14 emails & 4 calls

Time taken for email 10 mins, Calls including the wait time 25-42 mins

Total No of titles: 342000

No of Unique Titles: 136800

No of Titles by Self Publisher Authors/Relatively Unknown: They would not dare do this to J. K. Rowling - 54720

Need Changes: 10K of such books need changes and assuming 5% gets stuck in Review Process - 531.2 titles get stuck in a month.

Wasting 74368 mins, 1.3K hours of customers across the world in a month.

Calculating the Cost of Bad Customer Experience, 7968 days of terrible customer Experience. And I have not yet calculated the Waste of Resource in all this. That number will be much significant.  

Now extrapolate this to some 157313 titles in the collection and assuming 1% gets stuck. You get 88 hours of customers being wasted every month with 566 days of bad Customer Experience. In a year of 365, you are create bad experience worth of 1.5 year

I may be off in my assumptions. I would not mind re-calculating it to the T for them as Pro-bono because it was a hell that I went through, one of the worst Customer experiences and don’t want any other aspiring writer, unconventional writers to go through this hell.

I wonder if your 15 principles of Leadership are only checked during the interview process only to be forgotten once in the system. I did not feel that I was interacting with people who believed it was Day 1 for them, rather felt it was their Last Working Day and they had to respond quickly and close the case without a minute's thought.