Your Downgrade is Not an Upgrade
When he was CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos was famous for passing along emails from customers to staff when it was obvious the company had done something that wasn’t “customer-centric.” After all, every day is allegedly “Day One” at Amazon as it strives to be “the most customer-centric company” on Earth (and maybe the Galaxy if Blue Origin goes to plan).
It’s with that as background that I almost emailed new Amazon CEO Andy Jassy the other day when my daughter asked Alexa to play a song – like she had thousands of times before – only to have Alexa play a completely different song.
After a brief, frustrating interrogation it became clear that in order to regain the previous functionality of playing a song on demand, one had to now purchase an additional Amazon subscription.
The Wall Street Journal recently covered this story and apparently the Hanson family is not alone in feeling enmity towards the change. What’s more, I call BS on Amazon’s claim that the change was driven by “customer feedback.” That’s obvious corporate double-speak.
Instead, given the current economic climate and recent layoffs at the company, I suspect this is an attempt to put a short-term jolt into Amazon’s income statement. And while it may work, what’s remarkable is how un-Amazon-like such a move is. For most of its life as a company Amazon has been famously long-term, foregoing profits to reinvest in the business and build arguably the most loyal customer base in the world. Historically it’s been successful at passing through price increase after price increase on its Prime service because it’s always so visibly improving.
So this is notable. It’s the first time Amazon has degraded its service because, maybe, it feels like it hasn’t earned the right to increase prices. That’s a troubling sign and points to a business that’s being run by the numbers and not generating them.
— By Tim Hanson
