I had ordered a book from Amazon. I got a message that it would be delivered on Feb 23, 2022. When I returned home, I checked for the book. It hadn't come. I waited for another day. When it still did not reach me, I logged into my account. The status reported on their site was that the book had been handed to our guard. I checked around. The book wasn't left with anyone, including our neighbors.
I put a chat message to their customer support. A customer support representative promptly answered all my queries. He took a couple of minutes to check my account. It was handed over to a person called Nikesh. I confirmed that there was no such person that I knew.
He politely apologized for the inconvenience caused to me. He offered to instantly refund the money since an immediate replacement wasn't available from the same supplier. I asked him to do that. He did it immediately.
I later went back to Amazon and ordered the book again. Later in the day, I got an email from the same representative. It provided me the details of the action taken on my refund. There was a link to rate the response of the rep. Obviously, I gave him 5/5 on all the parameters. Amazon successfully converted a problem situation into a positive experience.
Some important lessons for all of us:
Never distrust your customers. Promptly settle the complaint without giving any excuses.
Empower your front-line staff to make a decision in favor of your customers. The Amazon rep did not have to ask for permission to refund. Nor did they have a complicated procedure for that. We should simply all the processes in the company, especially the client-facing ones. Removing frictions should be one of the core goals for all organizations.
I am sure Amazon has a process of evaluating its customers. The rep would have access to the key stats like my purchasing frequency, lifetime value, past record. That dashboard enabled him to make a quick decision. We all need to create such dashboards.
Subodh
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