Tag Archives: correction of error

What we can learn from how Amazon deals with poor customer experiences

amazon_innovation_coe_process

A true test of any company is what happens when things go wrong. Does the leadership step up to fix a problem? Is it a bandaid fix? or is it something permanent, that involves going to the root cause of a problem.

The world’s most customer centric company, Amazon has a great methodology called “Correction of Error” or COE. As Scott Brinker outlines in his article on innovating like Amazon: It has been baked into their culture and requires all leaders to ask the following questions:

  • What happened?
  • What was the impact on customers and your business?
  • What was the root cause?
  • What data do you have to support this?
  • What were the critical implications, especially security?
  • What lessons did you learn?
  • What corrective actions are you taking to prevent this from happening again?

This is a great way to ensure that Amazon continues to learn and minimizes the chance that the same problem will happen for multiple customers.

Now for a fun 60 second example from the movie “Meet the Parents” with Ben Stiller

While this is obviously a made-up example, I am sure many of us have had similar experiences of over zealous staff taking policies and procedures a little too seriously.

If you were the responsible manager, or a colleague, what would you do?