How an AWS customer optimization leader applies Amazon’s key principles
Sure, make it easy for customers to buy from you. Definitely offer strong support long after the sale. If you really want to deliver a strong customer experience, however, you probably need to hire someone like Diana Medimorec.
As head of customer optimization & enablement at Amazon Web Services (AWS) for DACH and EMEA Emerging Markets, Medimorec and her team focus on the one area that appeals universally to all customers in every sector: saving money.
“In the past 15 years, we’ve lowered prices around 70 times,” Medimorec told attendees at Central Europe’s ExperieceCon 2021 virtual summit earlier this month. “The key role of my team is to help customers use the platform and optimize and reduce their costs , , . In doing so you earn their trust, because you’re making sure they understand your commitment to them is a long-term one.”
While a lot of CX strategies are aimed to attracting more customers and increasing a brand’s share of wallet with them, Medimorec pointed out that cost savings is one of the best ways to ensure customers will be open to hearing about new products or opportunities a vendor could have. The pandemic has only heightened this approach.
“Now, when we have COVID, the whole department has been developing different programs, where we might be offering options to slow down payments, offer credits or just assist them in the transition they’re going through.”
This was just one example where Medimorec showed how the same leadership principles Amazon uses to inform the CX of its consumer e-commerce operation are applied to its enterprise cloud computing service.
She cited Jeff Bezos’ ‘Day 1’ mentality, for example, where the emphasis is on tackling customer problems without getting mired in an organization’s internal bureaucracy.
“As companies then they become larger, there is a tendency to implement processes. These processes, at some point, can become their own purpose,” she warned. “The focus should be on customer outcomes, and not on serving the process. We try not to put ourselves in the position of designing another process without asking if it’s beneficial for the customer.”
Medimorec’s comments were part of a panel discussion on aligning business and CX metrics. Another panelist, CX Factory founder Balázs Szabó, noted that keeping things simple is particularly important amid the pandemic, where many organizations are just trying to keep basic services running and projects are piling up on people’s desks.
“Priorities have changed massively,” he said. “We have to just admit that our C-level boards’ intellectual bandwidth and focus is just reduced. It’s really smart now to how to help these people with metrics to drive the CX programs.”
Priszcilla Várnagy CEO of a firm called Be-novative, agreed. She suggested firms could look to other Silicon Valley firms who cite the idea of “North Star” metrics, which quantify how the value a company provides to customers translates into financial results.
Medimorec suggested another one: assessing where your approach to developing products truly comes from.
“Ninety per cent of the features we offer are based on customer demands,” she said. “We try to really work backwards from the customer, rather than focus on what competitors are doing.”
