On Variable Markup Michael Julson links to this excellent interview with Jeff Bezos on Harvard Business Review. Read it. Here’s what I learned.
“Every new employee, no matter how senior or junior, has to go spend time in our fulfillment centers within the first year of employment. Every two years they do two days of customer service. Everyone has to be able to work in a call center.”
A graphic designer doesn’t need the skills to work in the fulfillment center and doesn’t have the knowledge to do customer service. So why do it?
People can contribute ideas far better with a more complete picture of the industry and your existing process.
Working on the front lines and serving the customer on a one-to-one level builds your relationship with the company and builds the loyalty from the bottom up.
I’m not going to require my fulfillment personnel to work in the contact center. Many on the staff don’t have the language or computer skills. As for the rest of our employees, this might be a management strategy worth stealing.
“we did auctions, but we didn’t like the results. Next we created zShops, which was fixed-price selling… We still didn’t like the results we got. It was when we went to the single-detail-page model that our third-party business really took off.”
For Amazon Auctions and zShops were huge failures. It was about 3 years between they first tried to integrate third party sellers with auctions and when they first succeeded in integrating third party sellers with the apparel and sporting goods stores. If you believe in a concept but fail, dissect the technique, determine the flaw, and try a different technique. That Amazon was able to get the internal buy-in to try a third technique to implement their initial strategy is very impressive. We should all be so persistent.
And everyone in business talks about passion. Tell me if you think Jeff Bezos was passionate about books or even e-commerce? If you see an opportunity and believe in that opportunity, go for it. The passion for success does very well in the face of passion for the field you will be working in.
Technorati Tags: Business, Management, Strategy, Passion
Aaron, thanks for the post and article link. Not only does it give people a “bigger picture” view so they can contribute ideas, but I feel getting people on the front lines and in front of customers gives them more of a vested interest in working for the company at large. Keep up the blog. Blogs take a lot of time and usually I find that blogs like yours don’t last too long
(e.g. no Nov posts yet).