The first rule of being an employee of any company is that you're on your best behavior when the boss is around. When that comes to Amazon, it just so happens that the boss is Jeff Bezos, and he's the second-richest man in the world.
Amazon has grown to become an e-commerce giant, and while it's just pipped to the post by Walmart, it's the second-biggest in terms of revenue. Not bad considering its humble origins as an online bookstore based out of a small office in Bellevue.
From tiny acorns do mighty oak trees grow, but through it all, Jeff Bezos has been there to steer the ship. He's apparently injected the same 'ruthless' Amazon culture into Blue Origin, suggesting that he's much like the late Steve Jobs and isn't a man to be trifled with.
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Speaking to the Lex Fridman Podcast, Bezos explained how he phoned Amazon customer service 'very early' in the Amazon timeline and was shocked to be left on hold for such a long time. The tech billionaire said that data presented in a weekly business review disagreed with customer feedback. Although the metrics claimed customers were waiting less than 60 seconds when phoning the 1-800 number for customer service, reviews suggested it was much longer. Deciding to test it himself, Bezos picked up a phone and was surprised by the outcome: "I said, 'Okay, let’s call'. Picked up the phone, and I dialed the 1-800 number and called customer service, and we just waited in silence."
When Fridman asked how long he was waiting for, Bezos continued: "Oh, it was really long, more than 10 minutes, I think."
We wouldn't have liked to have been the person on the other end when Bezos eventually got through, but according to the man himself, he sees it as a learning curve: "It dramatically made the point that something was wrong with the data collection.
"We weren’t measuring the right thing, and that set off a whole chain of events where we started measuring it right."
He referred to the incident as being an important reminder to check these things, concluding: "That’s an example, by the way, of truth-telling is like that’s an uncomfortable thing to do, but you have to seek truth even when it’s uncomfortable, and you have to get people’s attention and they have to buy into it, and they have to get energized around really fixing things."
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Fridman says that it reiterates Bezos and Amazon's 'defining' factor, adding that he's "just being obsessed with making customers happy."
Others were equally shocked by the story, with one person responding: "Imagine sitting in the boardroom waiting in silence for 10min for customer service to pick up after you just told Jeff the data shows it is only 60 seconds and everything is fine lol."
Another grumbled: "Amazon’s service has gone WAYYYYYYY down since Bezos stepped aside. I used to buy nearly 95% from Amazon and that has gone down to probably less than 50%. They are not who they used to be."
A third concluded: "I’m a senior software engineer at Amazon. It really is this serious when it comes to reviewing data that doesn’t match with anecdotes. You will be called out in the meeting in front of everyone if you try to present conflicting data.
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"This was one of the first Jeff stories I heard in my first year which was seven years ago. The leadership & employees have a very high bar here. Not everyone’s cup of tea honestly."