Most companies are not customer obsessed, that's why they fail. Let me give you an example;
I've bought a sofa set from Coleman, and supposedly I needed to measure the door, if the sofa can fix or not. Because of the shape of the hallway and entrance, the sleeper did not fix from door. And carrier guys did not want to push further. Luckily, my patio's door was large enough to fit. I've called Coleman and explained the situation, they demanded extra money from me, to deliver through patio's door, or they were gonna send it back, which I have to pay for shipment and 15% re-stocking fee.
I come from another country, this would never be an issue. No matter what, carrier would deliver inside my home (either through front or back, or patio's door, or window), and never ask for extra.
If I would have bought from Amazon, I'm sure that I could send back, or speak for another delivery option. This is why Amazon is winning, they are customer obsessed, they are there to help, even if they lose money.
>This is why Amazon is winning, they are customer obsessed, they are there to help, even if they lose money.
They are so customer obsessed that I can't trust the brand name AC adapter I purchase from them is made with quality materials from a trusted brand, or if it's a counterfeit sent to their warehouses and commingled with all of the other inventory.
And they're so customer focused that they removed the option to restrict product searches to only show "shipped and sold by Amazon.com".
The only thing their actions show me is that they're obsessed with higher profit margins, which can't be obtained by providing traditional retail services. They can achieve higher profit margins by simply being a platform and collecting a commission of all the transactions.
Amazon would have the sense to have a popup with measurement instructions as they would learn from the first 5 times that happened and take action to ensure it never happened again.
I used to work for a relatively large bank that for years didn't even track what customers were calling our mega call centre about. It took them a long time to realize that 25% of calls were password resets because the button was hard to see. They had recently expanded the call centre and all over a hard to see button.
Amazon lost me as a customer completely. They're not at all customer focused. Their shipping care/quality is horrendous (stuff is damaged all the time). Any non-trivial issues (anything that can't be resolved by refunding money, re-sending the item) have no path to resolution. Amazon.com itself is like a flea market: tons of untrustworthy/counterfeit merchandise, fake reviews everywhere.
Apple is customer obsessed. Amazon is efficiency obsessed.
Refund and replacement aren't always easy depending on where you live or which amazon firm it is (different countries, different contractor company). But that's not even the point, wasted time and headache is not something many want to deal with.
They are so customer obsessed that they sent me 5 defective different products one after another last time I purchased electronics from them (feb). In the end, I simply gave up and decided I would never buy anything remotely expensive there. The customer rep didn't do anything. I needed a laptop urgent but the laptop came wrong twice and after emailing jeff (because their customer rep didn't do anything for days mentioning warehouse investigation). I got some indian guy who forgot about me again after telling me to wait a few days. Then another indian guy taking his place told me to wait, that repeated until march of 10-15th. Copy paste responses looking like spam. (gmail even put one of their email in my spambox)
I got nothing in the end and wasted damn time with customer support + money stuck twice... since refunds take time to appear.
Not that I, too, find it ridiculous that the delivery person doesn't take a minute to try and get it into your house another way instead of bringing it all the way back, but do note that restocking and delivery fees are real. Amazon does free shipping not because it makes them more money but because they know the competition doesn't have as deep pockets.
A podcast from "the university of Flanders" (which is more than one university, but alas) talked about this and that free shipping offers are ways to bind customers but that it's typically not actually viable with current profit margins and just an attempt to squeeze others out of the market. (If someone speaks Dutch/Flemish and cares for the original, I could probably find it again.)
I've bought a sofa set from Coleman, and supposedly I needed to measure the door, if the sofa can fix or not. Because of the shape of the hallway and entrance, the sleeper did not fix from door. And carrier guys did not want to push further. Luckily, my patio's door was large enough to fit. I've called Coleman and explained the situation, they demanded extra money from me, to deliver through patio's door, or they were gonna send it back, which I have to pay for shipment and 15% re-stocking fee.
I come from another country, this would never be an issue. No matter what, carrier would deliver inside my home (either through front or back, or patio's door, or window), and never ask for extra.
If I would have bought from Amazon, I'm sure that I could send back, or speak for another delivery option. This is why Amazon is winning, they are customer obsessed, they are there to help, even if they lose money.