Ok, so old habits are very hard to break (‘scuse me while I top up my coffee cup and grab a handful of chocolate bullets). My old habit is that I am a marketing gal from way back I can’t help but look at most things from a marketing or business perspective. It is this habit that tweaked my interest when I read in O’Reilly Media Inc (2010) about Amazon.com recently. Now I know and use Amazon.com and have done for quite a few years but I never really considered its success until reading the article. I was really impressed by the dotcoms’ initiative to enhance its existing data by adding publisher supplied cover images, and index, and sample material. The most significant evolution was to trust the users to annotate the data, with their own contributions thus making Amazon.com the primary site on books and also a great reference source. Constantly evolving, harnessing the collective experience and intelligence of its users, it is a self fulfilling organism. The more users visit the site, the more material and annotations are added, thus increasing the level and quality of the site and therefore increasing its user numbers.
Brings me back to an old text book of mine called The Customer Driven Company: Moving from Talk to Action. Whiteley (1991) in which he propounds the virtue of “saturating your company with the “customers’ voice”. Amazon has evolved and adapted from a website that supplies a product to a service provider perspective and in doing so they have as Whiteley (1991) pg 87 explains liberated its “customer champions”. They have done this by Whiteley (1991) pg 92 “engaging every person’s whole mind in improving your organisation” or as it applies to Amazon.com engaging every user’s whole mind in improving your website. Whiteley emphasizes that listening to customers requires open communication. I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between rules for traditional business success and their mirroring in current Web 2.0 successes. (Fascinating eh!)
Whiteley, R. (1991). The Customer Driven Company: Moving from Talk to Action. U.S.A. Addison Wesley
O’Reilly Media Inc. (2010). What is Web 2.0? Retrieved from http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html?page=3#designpatterns
Ok, so I couldnt help myself on this one. My hubby and I have owned a service station for 6 years and then Bakers Delight for 6 years whilst we raised out daughters to school age.
ReplyDeleteWe are alsways taught the "Customer is always right" but what a bitter pill to swallow that one is.
Customers have a wonderful way of thinking they are better than us, and they are right, reality is in the world we now live in customer service just doesnt exist, you only have to wait in a telephone line to see how long we wait, how many oush this button push that button to realise that the "Customer DOES NOT COME FIRST ANYMORE" so if yiu are fortunate enought to be served today by someone who te=reats you with respect and actually gives a damn about serving you then I congratulate you, and I comiserate that the world we are evolving into just doesnt care.
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http://driningand teenagers.wordpress.com
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Cheers
Tracy