Amazon.com has earned a reputation for strong service by letting customers get what they want without ever talking to an employee. Sales clerks are nonexistent. Orders ship with a few mouse clicks. Packages arrive on doorsteps quickly. It all happens with monotonous regularity even as the number of customers has doubled in the past five years to 88 million. But when things go wrong at Amazon—and they occasionally do—the company’s employees get involved. That may be where Amazon stands out most markedly from other companies, and helps explain how the company earned the No. 1 spot on BusinessWeek’s customer service ranking this year. One recent February day in Manhattan, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s excitable 45-year-old founder and chief executive, sat still long enough to explain the ideas behind his company’s approach. He talked about the distinctions Amazon makes between customer experience and customer service. The latter is only when customers deal with Amazon employees—and Bezos wants that to be the exception rather than the rule. “Internally, customer service is a component of customer experience,” he says. “Customer experience includes having the lowest price, having the fastest delivery, having it reliable enough so that you don’t need to contact [anyone]. Then you save customer service for those truly unusual situations. You know, I got my book and it’s missing pages 47 through 58,” he says, breaking into a booming laugh. Fixing customers’ problems builds loyalty with people, says Bezos. But it’s also a good way to spot recurring issues that need to be addressed more systematically. Outside merchants are a prime example. For years, Amazon has allowed other retailers to sell through its Web site to broaden the selection of products it offers. But these companies can be an Achilles’ heel. At eBay, which also lets merchants sell through its site, there have been complaints about poor service and fraud.

Questions 

1. Why is customer service or “customer experience” so important to Amazon.com ? 

2. In what ways does Amazon try to increase the level of customer service over time? 

3. In what ways has studying customer complaints helped Amazon to increase the quality of the customer experience and boost sales?