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It feels like the only rational explanation is "Bezos wants it like this." I know the folks at Amazon are talented, but the abject failure to optimize for qual

by ethbro 7y ago

It feels like the only rational explanation is "Bezos wants it like this." I know the folks at Amazon are talented, but the abject failure to optimize for quality over quantity is pretty much only explainable as intentional. I guess a second runner up would be that they're so organizationally KPI-focused, and their KPIs are so myopic, that no one actually realizes how much they're screwing up customer experience. But that seems a stretch.

duxup 7y ago
I agree. It seems that it is by design in some way. The shift is really dramatic. Perhaps it is just "we're not eating enough of the wall-mart (call it what you want) market". And now they're going after that at the expense of the larger brand. They're big enough now that they'll grow / maybe miss what they're doking up until it is too late. I'm already shopping elsewhere more often / actively searching out alternatives to Amazon.
derefr 7y ago
Or perhaps they’re so KPI-focused that they do know they’re screwing up the customer experience, but they don’t care, because customer experience isn’t a KPI and so won’t get them promoted? Interesting factoid: I’ve never seen Amazon attempt to take any net-promoter-score-like “Would you recommend Amazon to your friends” measure. Google does these (I just had one pushed on me while using the GCP console.) Apple probably does them somewhere, even if I haven’t noticed it. Facebook definitely does them. But Amazon seems to be actively resistant to collecting this information. They seem to not want to quantize customer-experience into a KPI.
- mywittyname 7y ago
  Amazon may have created a more object way of measuring the same thing, but without needing to actually ask customers. They probably know at least a some of garbage products sold on their platform. If that's the case, merely tracking visits and revenues from customers who received poorly made products and comparing with customers who've received well made products over time probably produces a more accurate picture of the effects that low-quality products have on their bottom line over time.
  - derefr 7y ago
    The metric you’re talking about is “churn.” It’s distinct from NPS, as NPS predicts growth—the additional value your brand has in people’s minds above the threshold for leaving, where it becomes a virality coefficient—whereas churn is just a self-evident measure of the percentage of people who see your brand as having value below the threshold. The fact that NPS (and measures like it) are predictors is useful, in that you end up also collecting real growth data, and the difference between NPS-predicted growth and actual growth can tell you how much of your growth was organic vs. marketing-driven, and thus give you a picture of your brand’s “inertia”—how valuable it is just sitting there doing nothing, separate from any marketing projects. Tracking that allows you to judge the brand impact of everything you do. But you can’t do it without some measure that actually gives you brand value, rather than simple growth.
    - mywittyname 7y ago
      FWIW, I worked on a team that built a platform which used customer activity to predict their NPS score. The algorithm was straight-forward and the results were pretty accurate; enough so to be used by A/B testing platforms for testing new features on users. A side-effect of our research was insight into the key features that dictated a positive response. Even with a complicated product, success was highly dependent upon about four of the 200 or so features we collected. I suspect that the minds at Amazon could come up with a much better solution than what we did. By virtue of having smarter, more experienced people on average, and a more simplistic product.
- bostik 7y ago
  > because customer experience isn’t a KPI and so won’t get them promoted? In a way, I think you may be on to something. At least indirectly. Amazon are constantly pushing the narrative that they are obsessively customer-focused and constantly thinking about long term. I have my reasons to believe this might have been true at one time, but now is mostly about optics. Having interviewed at the company a few years back, there sure was no long-term thinking about anything they internally advocate for potential new hires.[ß] To be honest, I was only exposed to one segment of their business, but I still find it hard to believe that kind of culture would be limited to a single part. ß: an extreme example: one of their more senior managers explained to me that a 1-year old team is already too old and ready to be disbanded. Knowing, from personal experience, that it can take two years to build a well-functioning team - that was a massive red flag.
  - senderista 7y ago
    During my time there I never saw any evidence that they cared about employee retention. The same pain points came up year after year on the tech survey, and were invariably ignored.
  - losteric 7y ago
    Amazon is customer obsessed in the same way that Google does no evil.
SirZimzim 7y ago
Need not forget the incredibly price sensitive crowd that is embracing Amazon.

by ethbro 7y ago

duxup 7y ago

I agree. It seems that it is by design in some way. The shift is really dramatic. Perhaps it is just "we're not eating enough of the wall-mart (call it what you want) market". And now they're going after that at the expense of the larger brand. They're big enough now that they'll grow / maybe miss what they're doking up until it is too late. I'm already shopping elsewhere more often / actively searching out alternatives to Amazon.

derefr 7y ago

Or perhaps they’re so KPI-focused that they do know they’re screwing up the customer experience, but they don’t care, because customer experience isn’t a KPI and so won’t get them promoted? Interesting factoid: I’ve never seen Amazon attempt to take any net-promoter-score-like “Would you recommend Amazon to your friends” measure. Google does these (I just had one pushed on me while using the GCP console.) Apple probably does them somewhere, even if I haven’t noticed it. Facebook definitely does them. But Amazon seems to be actively resistant to collecting this information. They seem to not want to quantize customer-experience into a KPI.

mywittyname 7y ago
Amazon may have created a more object way of measuring the same thing, but without needing to actually ask customers. They probably know at least a some of garbage products sold on their platform. If that's the case, merely tracking visits and revenues from customers who received poorly made products and comparing with customers who've received well made products over time probably produces a more accurate picture of the effects that low-quality products have on their bottom line over time.
- derefr 7y ago
  The metric you’re talking about is “churn.” It’s distinct from NPS, as NPS predicts growth—the additional value your brand has in people’s minds above the threshold for leaving, where it becomes a virality coefficient—whereas churn is just a self-evident measure of the percentage of people who see your brand as having value below the threshold. The fact that NPS (and measures like it) are predictors is useful, in that you end up also collecting real growth data, and the difference between NPS-predicted growth and actual growth can tell you how much of your growth was organic vs. marketing-driven, and thus give you a picture of your brand’s “inertia”—how valuable it is just sitting there doing nothing, separate from any marketing projects. Tracking that allows you to judge the brand impact of everything you do. But you can’t do it without some measure that actually gives you brand value, rather than simple growth.
  - mywittyname 7y ago
    FWIW, I worked on a team that built a platform which used customer activity to predict their NPS score. The algorithm was straight-forward and the results were pretty accurate; enough so to be used by A/B testing platforms for testing new features on users. A side-effect of our research was insight into the key features that dictated a positive response. Even with a complicated product, success was highly dependent upon about four of the 200 or so features we collected. I suspect that the minds at Amazon could come up with a much better solution than what we did. By virtue of having smarter, more experienced people on average, and a more simplistic product.
bostik 7y ago
> because customer experience isn’t a KPI and so won’t get them promoted? In a way, I think you may be on to something. At least indirectly. Amazon are constantly pushing the narrative that they are obsessively customer-focused and constantly thinking about long term. I have my reasons to believe this might have been true at one time, but now is mostly about optics. Having interviewed at the company a few years back, there sure was no long-term thinking about anything they internally advocate for potential new hires.[ß] To be honest, I was only exposed to one segment of their business, but I still find it hard to believe that kind of culture would be limited to a single part. ß: an extreme example: one of their more senior managers explained to me that a 1-year old team is already too old and ready to be disbanded. Knowing, from personal experience, that it can take two years to build a well-functioning team - that was a massive red flag.
- senderista 7y ago
  During my time there I never saw any evidence that they cared about employee retention. The same pain points came up year after year on the tech survey, and were invariably ignored.
- losteric 7y ago
  Amazon is customer obsessed in the same way that Google does no evil.

SirZimzim 7y ago

Need not forget the incredibly price sensitive crowd that is embracing Amazon.