“When we’re at our best, we don’t wait for external pressures. We are internally driven to improve our services, adding benefits and features, before we have to. We lower prices and increase value for customers before we have to. We invent before we have to.”
Takeaway
In the short term, spending money to deliver value above what your customers could reasonably expect looks foolhardy — in the long run, it could be your competitive advantage.
Proactively bringing value to your users and delighting them builds attachment and trust. Build enough of it, and you create a connection with your customers that becomes hard to break.
Challenge
On Wall Street, delivering value above and beyond what your customers expect is not considered a sensible decision — especially if it costs money. One early critic of Amazon derisively described the company as a “charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers.” This kind of attitude has become so pervasive that for many businesses, it’s seen as safer to move in lockstep with your competitors, never falling behind but never advancing ahead of them either.
Solution
Building a great customer-centric business over the long-term doesn’t happen when you’re only reacting to your competitors.
Proactively delighting your users costs money, but it pays off when you distinguish yourself — your customers stick around for longer and they pay you more.
The longer a company is able to retain its customers, the less it needs to spend on acquisition or marketing. The more revenue it drives from each customer, the stronger its business.
For Amazon, building a high lifetime value among its customer base through proactive delight has been a powerful differentiator. The average lifetime value of a Prime customer was estimated at $2,500 in 2017, well over the $150 average in e-commerce.
Jeff Bezos letter to shareholders 2012
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 2012
Jeff Bezos has been writing a letter to shareholders since 1997 and looking at all if them gives an insight to the organisation and a masterclass in leadership. This is a series of short blogs that gives you a snap shot / key takes outs of each letter, along with links to them all.
link to all letters to shareholders
- 1997: Bring on shareholders who align with your values
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 1997
- 1998: Stay terrified of your customers
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 1998
- 1999: Build on top of infrastructure that’s improving on its own
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 1999
- 2000: In lean times, build a cash moat
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 2000
- 2001: Measure your company by your free cash flow
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 2001
- 2002: Build your business on your fixed costs
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 2002
- 2003: Long-term thinking is rooted in ownership
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 2003
- 2004: Free cash flow enables more innovation
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 2004
- 2005: Don’t get fixated on short-term numbers
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 2005
- 2006: Nurture your seedlings to build big lines of business
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 2006
- 2007: Missionaries build better products
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 2007
- 2008: Work backwards from customer needs to know what to build next
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 2008
- 2009: Focus on inputs — the outputs will take care of themselves
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 2009
- 2010: R&D should pervade every department
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 2010
- 2011: Self-service platforms unlock innovation
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 2011
- 2012: Surprise and delight your customers to build long-term trust
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 2012
- 2013: Decentralize decision-making to generate innovation
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 2013
- 2014: Bet on ideas that have unlimited upside
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 2014
- 2015: Don’t deliberate over easily reversible decisions
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 2015
- 2016: Move fast and focus on outcomes
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 2016
- 2017: Build high standards into company culture
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 2017
- 2018: Wandering is an essential counterbalance to efficiency
Jeff Bezos Letter to Shareholders 2018
Data Pulses storytelling 