Customer Lifecycle – What do Amazon do?

When you want to improve the customer service and the customer lifecycle are in your business – why not learn from one of the best out there!

What is it that Amazon do that enables them to consistently provide good customer service as part of their customer lifecycle?

They communicate well.  Communicating effectively is providing the right information at the right time to the right person. 

Let’s take a look at that in a bit more detail by examining what happens when you order a product from Amazon

1. Search for a product on Amazon’s website
2. Click the product to view more information. At this stage you also see a lot of extra, helpful details, including:
   • customer reviews of the product
   • other products that complement the one you’re viewing
   • similar products to the one you’re viewing
   • other products that customers bought after viewing this one
3. Add the item to your basket or go straight to checkout
4. Create an account or log in to an existing one. Here, you’re updating your personal details in Amazon’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system for them
5. Continue to payment. At this point, you can choose from multiple delivery options, either to an address that suits you or to one of Amazon’s Lockers
6. Complete payment
7. You receive an email confirming your transaction, which you can also view online. This email also tells you that you’ll be notified when the item has been dispatched
8. You then receive an email telling you when your item has been dispatched. They’ve met this previously set expectation. It also shows the expected delivery date
9. Depending on the seller, you might then receive an email confirming the day of delivery
10. Once the item has been delivered, you’ll receive an email confirming it has been received
11. You receive an email asking you to provide feedback about the item and the seller’s service to you
12. You receive recommendations for other products by email and when viewing other items on their website, based on the product you have bought

How do they do this with millions of transactions to fulfil and customers to service all over the world?

Millions of global transactions

They invest in systems and automate business processes using technology

The steps above outline a business process. In a small business, people often do each step by hand. As your business grows, with more customers and staff, manual processing becomes inefficient. Technology helps reduce costs and handle higher volumes

Define your customer lifecycle

The first step is to define your business process, called the ‘customer lifecycle’

• What are the contact points, or touchpoints, the customer has at each step of their journey with your business
• How do you make these touchpoints a pleasant experience, with as little fuss as possible for the customer
• How do you make sure you give customers the right information at the right time

Once you’ve detailed each step in the journey, and the content and format of each communication (email, phone call, letter, text message, social media update), you can use technology to make it efficient, reliable, trusted, and repeatable

Automate the journey with CRM

You can do this by using a CRM system, and your other business systems, to their full potential

By creating automated workflows and screen process chains, and by making sure you trust your customer data, you can run a professional customer lifecycle to be proud of. It will reflect the quality of your business, your products, and your services