How Amazon Stays Ahead with Customer-Centric Innovation

Do you want to know a secret?

Amazon’s success is all because of you.

One of the online giant’s fundamental mindsets is customer-back thinking. From searching their website to the delivery van at your door, every initiative starts by looking at what helps the customer (you), then working backward to figure out how to make it happen.

Customer-back thinking makes Amazon an inherent disrupter. While other companies focus solely on stockholders or operating costs, Amazon’s leaders determine what customers want, but the current market doesn’t provide. Same-day delivery of prescriptions is just one recent example.

This week, we hear from three high-level Amazon executives, each one encouraging innovative mindsets in different ways. They reveal their teams’ latest innovations, and their own leadership philosophies that keep their teams on the cutting edge.

These leaders all cited this customer-centric innovation as a keystone for their divisions. Udit Madan (VP of Worldwide Operations), for example, points out that the driving force behind using, and even inventing, the latest technology centers on making the customer experience better. The ideas often begin on the front line, with feedback from employees paving the way. Customers want faster and faster delivery; people in fulfillment centers spot areas for quicker processing, more ergonomic designs, and safety improvements. Implementing them boosts both employee morale and customer satisfaction.

In fact, Sarah Rhoads, VP for Workplace Health and Safety, spots a direct relationship between employee well-being and customer service. She works hard to make Amazon the safest workplace in the industry; a well-cared-for employee, she says, will provide better customer care. They’ll keep the innovation ideas flowing, too—Amazon is deeply committed to upskilling all team members through programs like Career Choice and their Upskilling Pledge. With their new skills, people will see fresh new ways to improve every aspect of the company.

The VP for Worldwide Prime, Jamil Ghani, sees Rufus and other AI applications improving the customer shopping experience. Shoppers disliked winnowing through hundreds of reviews to determine product quality, so Amazon developed AI-generated review summaries to quickly assess how buyers felt about their purchases. Another AI system analyzes purchase trends and histories, customizing buying guides tailored to each individual to help them find the products they love quickly, instead of scrolling through thousands of options.

Yet more systems monitor the movement of goods, adjusting the supply chain to minimize the chances of seeing that dreaded “out of stock” message on an item you really need to have ASAP.

Business customers have a seat in customer-back thinking, too. For example, the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Bedrock platform ultimately enables businesses to create their own AI-driven apps and customer experiences.

The best part of customer-back thinking? You can adopt it in your organization, too. You may use it on a different scale: after all, not every company has well over a million people on its payroll! But even a simple solopreneur can find greater success thinking about the customer first. Even the Amazon megacorp started with a handful of people working in Jeff Bezos’ garage.

This article was adapted by Dan Mushalko from our podcast episode Innovation Insights: Amazon Executives Share How They Deliver the Future.

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