How did Amazon devolve into a company that trapped Prime subscribers? Consider its lack of UX design and copywriting, our new Big Tech Insider columnist writes.
I enjoyed this post. I worked in Amazon Retail for a couple of years, and the experiences shared here are familiar. Software engineers were at the top of the hierarchy, and won virtually all differences of opinion/approach because they were the engineers. The second class citizenry of other functions was open and intentional, and continuously made the customer experience worse because only one set of voices mattered. We in other functions were reduced to creating band-aids and workarounds trying to mitigate the CX damage. More and more focus was put on routing customer service contacts into automated channels that didn’t involve expensive human reps, and when the data came in showing it wasn’t going well, they doubled down. On paper Amazon got some things right (e.g. leadership principles) but I found the practices in reality caused me so much cognitive dissonance that I left. When I see today’s shopping experience, I see it’s kept getting so much worse.
Out of all the apps and services I use regularly, Amazon apps are the only ones I dislike using. The main Amazon app is a confusing, slow, bloated mess. In the Prime video app, recommendations are broken and search doesnt work. The Amazon music app is an irredeemable, bottom up disaster.
Out of all the "big tech" companies, I think amazon should be the priority for the american govt because you can clearly see the worsening of the product and consumer experience because of its monopoly.
Disorder And Improvisation: How Amazon's Chaos Shapes Its Products
I enjoyed this post. I worked in Amazon Retail for a couple of years, and the experiences shared here are familiar. Software engineers were at the top of the hierarchy, and won virtually all differences of opinion/approach because they were the engineers. The second class citizenry of other functions was open and intentional, and continuously made the customer experience worse because only one set of voices mattered. We in other functions were reduced to creating band-aids and workarounds trying to mitigate the CX damage. More and more focus was put on routing customer service contacts into automated channels that didn’t involve expensive human reps, and when the data came in showing it wasn’t going well, they doubled down. On paper Amazon got some things right (e.g. leadership principles) but I found the practices in reality caused me so much cognitive dissonance that I left. When I see today’s shopping experience, I see it’s kept getting so much worse.
Out of all the apps and services I use regularly, Amazon apps are the only ones I dislike using. The main Amazon app is a confusing, slow, bloated mess. In the Prime video app, recommendations are broken and search doesnt work. The Amazon music app is an irredeemable, bottom up disaster.
Out of all the "big tech" companies, I think amazon should be the priority for the american govt because you can clearly see the worsening of the product and consumer experience because of its monopoly.