Excellent Customer Service at scale IS possible. AWS provides Amazing Web Service.

7 days ago I accidentally exposed an AWS key to my account. Within 15 minutes Amazon contacted me by phone to let me know that the key was exposed. I missed the call and by that evening when I picked up the message, some lovely soul had racked up over $13,000 in EC2 server time on my unwitting behalf. I trust that karma is a bitch for the thief.

After recovering from the shock, the sickening feeling in my stomach and cold fear, I contacted Amazon to explain the situation and ask if there was anything they could do.

The incredible response was a genuine desire to help solve the issue and set my mind at ease. They updated me daily and resolved the issue in just over a week.

Thank you to Precious S, James I and Daniel at Amazon. I’ve been a happy AWS, Kindle, Echo and book client for years and will remain so.

I experience shitty service daily from most companies I deal with in a personal capacity, from dismissive call center agents, 40 minute plus call waiting times, patronizing frontline staff and endless irritating automated voice systems, and I’ve come to accept that this is the way it is.

In my professional capacity, driving startup innovation in business, companies often wonder why the new startups and not-so-new online players are disrupting them.

AWS operates a $7.3B business with over 1 Million enterprise customers (that’s businesses, not individuals), growing at 81 percent year on year.

Figure out why and how Amazon Web Services does individual customer service at scale and you have the answer.

After reading The Everything Store on the Amazon and Jeff Bezos story, I suspect it’s as simple as accepting nothing less than excellence from your Organisation, and that starts with the best possible service, always, including to one person with a tiny AWS account in Melbourne, Australia, and every other individual customer you have.

#CFL (Customer For Life)