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.

I recently had a fabulous shopping experience with an Amazon.com vendor,  Shop at Clares.  I had ordered a high-end ironing board. I was happy with the functionality, but there was a small problem with it. There was an awkward discoloration on the cover.

I emailed them asking if this was common and if it would effect the clothing that I ironed. They told me how to test it out. But then, they went beyond what they had to. They said that I had ordered something with an expectation of it to look a certain way and that if it bothered me in the least to let them know and they would replace it.  I was relieved and asked for a replacement cover.

In many customer service situations, it’s common to do the least amount to solve a problem. Had they not offered to replace the cover, I might have lived with it barring any ironing problems.  But since they went the extra mile to assure I was happy with the order, I left them a raving review on Amazon and will recommend and shop with them in the future.

When online shopping trumps brick and mortar stores, I predict we will see customers actions shaping the behaviors of brands, effecting not only where to shop but the product development as well (I’ll elaborate on this idea in a future post). It is the progressive companies like, Zappos, Amazon.com, and the smaller ones like Shop at Clares that will shine during this revolution. It is our hope at Trustworthy that we can help strengthen the relationship between the customer and the brand.