Why Amazon Are The Best

Published June 4, 2010

Do you use Amazon (.com / .co.uk / .ca etc)? Well, that’s probably a silly question because I would guess most of us have used them at one time or another – especially since you can get pretty much anything from them, directly or indirectly.

Why do we keep going back? Why do we rely on them so much?

Well, I can only speak from personal experience and I must confess – it rare that I shop anywhere else unless someone offers me a cracking deal.

The reason is simple: They have spent years mastering customer services. They know how to provide the absolute nearest thing to perfect online customer services – without ever giving the impression they are selling to us/me.

I go back to Amazon because I want to.
There’s the key: I want to.

I want to do buy from Amazon

Because they get it right, time and time again. I honestly cannot remember a time when Amazon got it wrong. And even if they ‘almost’ get it wrong I can see them with their hands in the air saying “oops – that was me – sorry dude” – and that was probably just something like a book is late from the publishers so the delivery will be a few days late… No big deal.

I deliberately said ‘Amazon Are The Best’ and not ‘Amazon Is The Best’ because credit to the people behind Amazon and not Amazon as a ‘thing’. It is the people behind the Amazon brand who have, obviously and clearly, studied what works and, through years of experimenting and studying the minutest of changes, what works and what doesn’t. The people are now extending a warm welcoming hand to me every time I walk through the door – they’re not selling to me, they are not getting in my face with items I don’t want, need or have any interested in – they make me feel welcome – cream and sugar sir?

Completely non-intrusive and without any hard sell, pressure.

Yes, I feel welcomed and I feel confident. I trust them. I like them. And, I guess I feel like I know them. I know I can depend on them to do what they say. I know that if they say my purchase will be with me by 1pm tomorrow – it will be. I know if they say it will be next Tuesday – it will be? Biscuit sir? Here, take another.

I want to buy from Amazon.

I’ve bought everything from cables and adapters to a Mac Book Pro and, even when I’m grabbing a book for under a tenner I feel just as warm and cuddled as I did spending £1,900 on my juicy Apple.

You see, there’s a great example. I spoke the the guy at Apple and, even though I never speak to anyone at Amazon – where did I buy my Mac Book Pro? Yep. Amazon.

Nothing against the guy at Apple – I just wanted to buy from Amazon because I know that it would arrive when they said it would, I know if I had a problem there’d be no hassle. I know that everything about the purchase would be smooth and incident free, I wanted to buy from them.

Are Amazon Perfect? No.

But they strive to be and that is part of what makes them so damn good. They don’t want anything less than perfection. If there was a ‘six sigma’ for online shopping (which there probably is) then Amazon would most likely be getting close to the award. Because they keep getting better. The improvements may be hard to notice but – in order to constantly improve the experience for you and for me they keep pushing harder and harder to be perfect.

Amazon knows me very well.

Even their emailed ‘recommendations’ never come across as intrusive and they nearly always get it ‘spot on’.

Yes I have recently been looking at wide screen monitors, Samsung in particular. Yes I have been looking at buying Microsoft Office for our home computers… Okay I’ll have to speak to them about offering me the Dyson but maybe they know me better than I thought they did.

Don’t you love it when someone you haven’t seen for a while spots you across the street and shouts your name? Wow. How did they remember me. Then they ask about your kids, about your job or about your favourite sports team. Wow. They remembered all that? You know that warm and wonderful feeling that someone cared enough to know you and bond with you? Ok well Amazon has a shed full of servers remembering all that stuff but the way they use it makes you feel like they care, like they want to bind with you and be best mates for life.

Amazon don’t like making mistakes

You get the feeling that they would genuinely be as p”’d off as you if they made a mistake.

If I go to Amazon.co.uk right now – the first row of items is directly related to things I’ve recently looked at or recently purchased. Ok – hardly rocket science you might say and you’d be right. But it’s better than just randomly showing me a selection of wide screen monitors – it will show me wide screen monitors in the price range I last looked at, with similar specifications to the ones I recently looked at. Why show me a 19″ if I’m clearly only interested in bigger, wider, more expensive?

If you went to a Lexus dealer and he showed you a Ford hatchback you’d be a bit miffed right? Well that’s what I’m talking about. Or on the other hand if you were in an electronics store looking at mid-range priced stereos and the interrupting sales dude works hard at drawing your attention to the top of the range all singing all dancing bells and whistles noise generator… You’d know he was after a hefty slice of commission, right?

Amazon doesn’t do that. Amazon shows you, gently, what you may be interested in – but in a calm, tea and biscuits kind of way.

I bet if I popped by the HQ I’d be welcomed into the sitting room where I’d find freshly baked scones and home made jam – along with a kettle, some cables, a Dyson, the latest version of Microsoft Office (for Mac, of course) and a Samsung wide screen monitor…

Two sugars was it sir?

Martin Koss – thinking out loud…

I don't mean to be so opinionated and argumentative, it's just me…