Amazon Leadership Principle - Customer obsession

The Thought - “Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to the competitors, they obsess over customers”

What is “Customer Obsession” at Amazon

Customer obsession is the essence of Amazon’s mission statement - to be the earth’s most customer-centric company. It is the driving force that propels them to do the best for their customers. At every step, they constantly challenge themselves on a question - “how will this impact my customer”. They have a very simple but yet difficult to follow method - listen to the customer. Every feedback and every escalation from the customer is seriously taken into consideration and inspected to the root cause before thinking of any solution. Customer feedback is almost treated as an external audit of their internal processes.

Customer Obsession Amazon interview questions

• Describe a difficult interaction you had with a customer ?

• Can you talk about a scenario where you went above and beyond for a customer ?

• Can you share an example when you anticipated a customer's need that the customer did not know they needed ?

• Did you ever ask for customer feedback and invent something for the customer ?

• Share an example when you evaluated the customer experience for your product or service ?

• Have you ever said no to a customer where you felt the request was unreasonable ?

• An example where you made changes that would meet the needs of the customer.

Interviewers expectations from your answers on “Customer Obsession”

• Do you listen to the customer and take customer feedback as a guiding input?

• Do you look for various approaches to take customer feedback?

• Are you a person who considers and values inputs from customers to drive improvements ?

• Are you a person who strives to delight the customer?

• Do you look for redundant tasks that does not contribute in improving customer experience?

• How well do you know your job so much so that you can even push back the customer if their request is not their best interest?

Must have in your answers on “Customer Obsession”

• Innovation - how did you do it, how did you know it was required?

• You consider every input that comes from the customer or stakeholders before taking an action.

• You learn from the past and if a situation reoccurs you would you do things differently by leveraging the past experience.

• You have a sound judgement of evaluating the inputs and you are smart enough to use only those inputs that matters the most.