Open Letter to Jeff Bezos

April 14th, 2009 by Kirk Skodis under Customer Service, Newsworthy, Response, Social Media

Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos

Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos

Dear Mr. Bezos,

All of us here at Trustworthy are huge fans of Amazon and regularly buy everything from flat-screens to shaving cream on Amazon.com. We get free shipping with Amazon Prime, and even harangue lazy authors via email to publish their works for the Kindle.

So it was with great lament that we witnessed the recent #AmazonFail fiasco. In case you missed it, there’s a great round up on Ad Age today. Now we’re inclined to believe the “ham-fisted glitch” story, giving you the benefit of the doubt you deserve after years of innovation and success. But where we can’t let you off so easy is this issue of Social Media Response, or the glaring lack thereof.

To illustrate how easy it would have been to avoid this mess, let’s pretend for a moment that you had hired Trustworthy to listen and respond to your customers in social media. It would’ve gone down something like this:

4/9/09 10:33pm – Author Alex Beecroft blogs on LiveJournal that her romance novel, False Colors, isn’t tracking on Amazon.

4/9/09 10:45pm – A Trustworthy representative comments on Alex’s blog that we’re looking into it, assuring her that either we, or someone from Amazon will get back to her in 24 hours with an answer.

4/10/09 1:11pm – Author Storm Grant blogs, again on LJ, that her book has lost its ranking as well.

4/10/09 1:25pm – A Trustworthy representative comments on Storm’s blog that this is a known issue and promises an answer within 24 hours.

4/10/09 1:45pm – Trustworthy advises an executive contact at Amazon about the problem, alerting them to the groundswell in online chatter. Amazon investigates, finds the “glitch” and Trustworthy notifies everyone who blogged, tweeted or posted comments about the issue.

4/11/09 – No one creates the hashtag #AmazonFail. Disaster averted.

Mr. Bezos, my guess is that Amazon was monitoring it all weekend, but no one responded. Next time, perhaps a few simple acts of Social Media Response will keep the brand you have worked so hard to create from being lumped-in with the notorious Motrin Moms, sleeping Comcast techs, and Dell Hells of the world.



  • http://www.stormgrant.com Storm Grant

    I agree that would have pre-empted the issue, although I don’t know how anyone would have anticipated the problem and found my blog (or vice versa).

    When I created #amazonfail, it was only a request for more information–not a call to action. Could anyone have foreseen this unprecedented reaction? I’m sure some poor media studies students are already having to write reports on it.

    Interesting post. Thanks for mentioning me.

  • http://www.gettrustworthy.com Kirk Skodis

    Thanks for the comment, Storm. Well first, we would have found your blog the same way you found this post – by searching keywords. Then, hopefully by responding quickly on behalf of Amazon, you (and all your readers) would have known that A) Amazon is listening, and B) Amazon is at least looking into the issue with a promise of a future update once they figured out what the problem was (Trustworthy would simply be the conduit between you two).

    All this would in most cases diffuse the uproar before it got out of hand.

    On a personal note, kudos to you for launching the groundswell. Any other comments or insights you might leave here about how Amazon could’ve responded to your concerns better are welcome and appreciated.

  • http://simoncoles.org/2009/04/amazon-they-still-dont-get-it/ Amazon – they still don’t get it | simoncoles.org

    [...] 2: Good advice for what Amazon should have done (albeit from a company that would happily provide them with a [...]

  • http://blog.gettrustworthy.com/2009/06/07/jumping-on-the-andwagon/ Trustworthy » Jumping On The Andwagon

    [...] what does this mean to companies who wish to avoid this? As I wrote in my Open Letter to Jeff Bezos, quick action and careful followups can help. The simple act of stepping outside your protective [...]

  • http://blog.gettrustworthy.com/2009/07/21/hurry-up-humanize-your-brand/ Trustworthy » Hurry Up & Humanize Your Brand!

    [...] comparison to #AmazonFail and others, Baja Fresh’s nine-hour response was almost admirable. But nine hours is a [...]

  • http://blog.gettrustworthy.com/2009/08/06/media-hacks-break-guitars/ Trustworthy » Media Hacks Break Guitars

    [...] is different from other recent cases (Dominos Pizza, AmazonFail, etc.) because the triggering event was a carefully crafted piece of content designed specifically [...]

blog comments powered by Disqus