Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer and one of the most valuable companies having just been founded in 1994 (just!).
Amazon chooses and builds its businesses on their three core capabilities:
Intense Customer Focus / Centricity
Complete mastery over Logistics
Use of technology
The unwavering vision and key principles that were laid out back in 1997 have stayed true even today.
What it means to be the Planet's most customer-centric organization Back in 1997, Jeff Bezos set out to create the Planet’s most customer-centric company and they have stayed true to this goal. Some key examples of customer-centricity from Amazon:
They famously coined customer-backward and skill-forward.
The place where they store items that get delivered to you and me are not called warehouses but are called Fulfillment Centers.
In the initial years they spent enormous energy in developing packaging to make it “Frustration-free” - again from a customer’s point of view.
Apparently, their meetings assume one chair to be occupied by the customer
3 years before Kindle was launched, their vision was to phenomenally improve customer experience of reading a book. Something that had not changed a lot from the time printing press was invented from a customer experience perspecive. And on and on. No wonder, they are routinely awarded the most customer-centric company in surveys in the US and other markets. In the process, they have been able to develop offerings such as PRIME and AWS to identify and capture Non-customers.
Mega-mega-growth mindset One thing that really strikes hard is his thinking long-term and mega-mega-big, way back in 1997. He said, even then, that they were building an organization that will be a multi-billion-dollar business. In hindsight, it looks so obvious but mind you, Amazon was a few-million firm then, power of internet less visible and how much can you scale a book business.
Thinking really big and large has played a key role in taking Amazon to the place it is today!
And most interestingly, in spite of the size and growth so far, Amazon believes they are still on Day 1!
This article first appeared on LinkedIN in series of posts. The article is largely based on the book "Invent & Wander" by Jeff Bezos.