It's taken pretty seriously internally. All new hires at most offices receive day-1 "Customer Obsession" training. I know this because I got certified as a trainer for that class just this week.
There are some cases where I think we've failed at it, speaking for myself and not the company of course, but the concept is still the driving force behind a lot of what goes on. "Start with the customer". Amazon Go is a pretty big recent example where the company is really proud internally of the customer obsession that went into it.
Bias note: I've been an Amazon dude a long time now.
Something I read recently on some other HN comment was that if you work in AWS you are customer-obsessed for AWS customers, when you work in 3rd party seller tools you're customer-obsessed for 3rd party sellers, when you work in ads you're customer-obsessed with the advertisers as your customers etc.
It makes a lot of sense for any company to operate this way (most I've seen already do) and explains how they can be genuinely customer-obsessed while still seeming like at times they don't have the average consumer's best interest at heart.
From three recent years working there, absolutely. They bend over backwards for their customers, always. The problem, and where most of the bad reputation comes from, is from people who aren't their customers -- warehouse employees, if you're trying to get things shipped to retail customers, or the actual employees, if you're trying to do anything. And, probably, their over-obsession with customers is why they've been so slow and incompetent about dealing with sellers cheating their system -- because the default was letting them get away with everything.
It does, and I think the problem is more that Amazon's internal processes and tribal knowledge are a bit clueless when it comes to fraud. Their perspective, historically, has been to allow as many products as possible on the site, because one of the way they get and retain customers is by 'having everything'. Their metrics don't incentivize large purges. I think it's a bit of an arms race between fraudulent sellers and the retail org's processes and engineering, and unfortunately the latter iterates much slower so they can't keep up.
Also, the warehouse processes at least are heavily designed around catching mistakes like mislabeling, but less so intentional fraud like fakes (or - they were a few years ago, imo). And they tend to treat fraud like a big data problem ('what can we do to lower this statistic') instead of case-by-case: 'we need to get rid of every fraudulent seller'. Which, like, if you try really hard to move a needle from, say, 80% to 95%, that ultimately means you are vocally okay with 5%, which is stupid.
> Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.
I think they are less customer centric, based on my own experiences as a customer over the years. Their customer service is still pretty decent though. And I think Bezos's statement on their willingness to make long term investments still holds.
I should stipulate that I separate these issues in my head from things like dismal working conditions. There's nothing that precludes Amazon from being excellent in some areas of corporate management and horrible in other ways. I think their increase to a minimum $15/hour wage was a very small step in the right direction, but they have a ways to go. Basically I consider their warehouse operations as a case-in-point for why unions still have a use in modern times. The ability to have a bathroom break that doesn't involve threading your member into an bottle in an out of the way place on the warehouse floor would seem to be one of the first "asks" of such a union. I also see the need to have medical services on site 24/7 as less of a feature, and more of a bandaid over the bug that is constant worker injury. In speaks to a culture of hurt that perpetually keeps the "time since last injury" clock hovering in the half-hour range.
I can explain how stuff like co-mingling may be customer centric - it's a necessary trade-off to offer large selection, low price and fast shipping. Maybe.
