Amazon Customer Experience: Strengths and Areas to Improve

Introduction

Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world and the retailer to which most consumers turn when they wish to make a purchase — particularly consumers who have Amazon Prime, which offers free two-day shipping on many goods. This might lead most consumers to assume that Amazon's customer service is superior to all alternatives. However, like all large companies, Amazon has had issues arise with its customer experience. Overall, Amazon has earned very positive reviews in terms of its customer relationships, but there is always room for improvement, and Amazon strives to set a higher and higher bar for itself rather than merely surpass its competitors. According to Coleman (2018), Amazon calls itself the most customer-centric company on earth — a claim that sets a very high level of expectations for consumers.

What Amazon Is Doing Right

According to CEO Jeff Bezos, he still reads customer complaints personally in order to gain a sense of what the company is doing wrong and what it can do better (Clifford, 2018). In Bezos' own words: "Their expectations are never static — they go up. It's human nature. We didn't ascend from our hunter-gatherer days by being satisfied. People have a voracious appetite for a better way, and yesterday's 'wow' quickly becomes today's 'ordinary'" (Clifford, 2018, par. 13). Bezos says that he takes both metrics and anecdotal evidence into consideration when constructing company policy, to ensure alignment between internal processes and growing customer expectations.

One example of what Amazon is doing right is its willingness to take responsibility even for mistakes that are not necessarily its fault. For example, when a PlayStation ordered as a Christmas gift was stolen off a customer's porch, the responsibility technically fell on UPS, the shipping company that had left the package in a vulnerable location — not on Amazon. Nevertheless, Amazon sent a replacement at no charge so the family would not be left without the gift at Christmas. Bezos noted that the free publicity Amazon received from the incident more than paid for the cost of the product (Mello, 2018). In previous eras, customers would tell only a few friends about a positive or negative experience with a company. Today, customers can post reviews read by thousands of people online. Consumers not only post reviews on Amazon itself; they also take to social media platforms such as Twitter, where their experiences can reach a massive audience.

In another small but significant encounter, when Amazon learned that a customer had incorrectly purchased AA batteries instead of AAA batteries, the company offered to send the correct batteries at no charge, reasoning that the cost of processing a return shipment would outweigh the value of reselling the returned merchandise (Coleman, 2018).

On a psychological level, Amazon has also overcome many customers' resistance to paying for shipping and handling costs. Paying for Amazon Prime and enabling one-click purchasing is, of course, a service that customers pay for. However, by charging a recurring monthly fee that customers come to take for granted on their credit card statements, the shipping feels effectively "free" and thereby generates positive feelings about the company and the shopping experience. The Prime membership itself becomes an incentive to order from Amazon, since consumers are motivated to maximize the value of a service they are already paying for.

Conclusion

Amazon has built a strong reputation for customer service through proactive problem-solving, a customer-first philosophy championed by its CEO, and smart structural incentives such as Amazon Prime. However, meaningful gaps remain: an unreliable review ecosystem, limited vendor accountability, and a recommendation engine that falls short of the truly personalized experience Amazon promises. Addressing these issues would bring the company closer to its own stated goal of being the world's most customer-centric business.