Amazon's CTO Retorts

I think there's a nice ironic touch to the fact that when I tried to leave a comment on this post by Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon.com, his technology would not allow me to sign in. It is fitting because Werner thinks Amazon does just fine listening to its customers and does not need the likes of Robert and me to come in and tell them much about anything in particular about how to get along with customers.

I think he does.  I'll get to that in a moment.

Werner argues that Amazon sets a very high bar and expects its guest speakers to be prepared to defend their ideas against these tough and exacting standards. He writes:

"This was my approach with challenging Shel and Robert at our lunch meeting. I wanted them abandon their fuzzy group hug approach, and counter me with hard arguments why they were right and I was wrong. Instead they appeared shell-shocked that anyone actually had the guts to challenge the golden wonder boys of blogging and not accept their religion instantly. "

I'm not the fuzzy group hug type and in 61 years, no one has previously called me a "golden boy." While Robert and I are indeed corporate blogging cheerleaders, I have to admit that I was shell-shocked when I learned that the heckler sitting on the floor, was CTO of Amazon.com.

I was surprised again by Werner's post, who characterized our visit as something that sounded a bit like the old Buckley-Galbraith Firing Line. The Amazon people who prepped me for this meeting , had just said Amazon wanted to hear about blogging and why they should do more of it. I don't often avoid confrontations, but this felt pretty much like the wrong forum for butting heads with our host's executive officer who was behaving like he was locked and loaded for bear hunting.

I don't know how Werner treats his guests in his own home, but the way he behaved just isn't the way I treat guests in mine. Werner, if you want to have a public debate on how Amazon could improve its customer relationships with more employee blogs or corporate blogs, please name the time and place--as well as the neutral referee. I require only two rules.  (1) Let me have my say next time, without you interrupting, and (2) Let's both agree to the same agenda before we go public with it.

Now, let me tell you a bit more about me as your customer--one of those millions you claim to know all about.

1. I have been a customer of your since about 1996.  You know how many books I've bought from you.  I don't because Amazon will not share my own data with me. That's okay.  My guess is that 90 percent of the books I have purchased from Amazon are non-fiction and that most of those are history, biography or business related. So tell me, Werner, why, for nearly 10 years does your list of recommended books for me only contain fiction books, with your #1recommendations to me being For Whom the Bell Tolls and Of Mice and Men? I emailed comments to some nameless person at east five times years ago.  But it never got fixed and I never got answered. If you have this much wrong about me, Werner, how much wrong do you have on all those other customers that you "know all about" as you stated yesterday?
2. Would you like to know how you can improve your relationship with me as a new author? Would you like to hear about the negative experiences scores of people told us about when our book first went live at Amazon.com? I'd love to tell someone in private, but try as I might, there seemed to be no avenue for talking t anyone--until I met two of Amazon's representatives at a social gathering. Face-to-face meetings don't happen all the time.  Our problem got fixed almost immediately because of that meeting, but perhaps--just perhaps--you are not as well set up to hear input from your constituents as you think.
3. Representatives from two Amazon departments have asked for my time, which I donated, to hear how blogging and bloggers could help them. They seem to think we had some valuable ideas.  Of course they asked questions and listened to our arguments.  They were sincere in hearing what we had to say, rather than hell-bent on proving us wrong before we said anything.

Werner, you are clearly a smart guy who gets blogging.  My partner, Robert has a great deal of respect for you. I don't want to pick a fight with you and whether or not you were "just pulling my chain," as you stated, you certainly did not leave me with the lasting impression that Amazon is nurturing an open and customer responsive culture. I suspect some of the fine Amazon employees we met feel the same.

I may not have moved the needle much in terms of corporate blogging at Amazon. But at least I met a whole lot of reall nice people who work there. But as the senior guy in the room, I really need to tell you, you did not personally enhance my personal view of Amazon and its executive leadership's influence on its internal culture.

+amazon +amzon.com +Werner +Vogels +corporate blogging +blog

Comments

[Robert Scoble]

Yeah, I felt he mischaracterized my reaction as well. I didn't feel shellshocked. Maybe I didn't answer him as well as I could.

I certainly didn't answer the Apple question well.

Here's what I told Target when I visited them: "I did some Technorati searches on Target. In the past 24 hours I've found 21 people saying things on their blogs about Target. 20 were very positive. One wasn't. That's your opportunity to improve your brand, help out a customer that isn't happy, and demonstrate your ability to listen."

Same goes for Apple or Amazon or BMW or anyone with a great brand (or, the Xbox team).

But, like you, I didn't see it as the place to get into a debate about what blogging can do for a company.

That said, I'd love a rematch!

[Robert Scoble]

By the way, two Amazon employees afterward told me they were suprised at the negativity from Werner. Maybe the shellshock came from his own employees?

[Jack Krupansky]

Sigh. [Not enough energy for a Grrrrrrrr...]

I already knew that Amazon was one of the companies that "doesn't get it" and is having trouble wrapping their minds around the concept that "the little people" (us potential customers) should be treated in a friendly and *conversational* manner and not as hostages to steal and protect from the evil competition.

I will continue to lobby for a concept I call "Corporate America 2.0", and I do have to admit that Amazon is far being being "there" and may be headed in the way-wrong direction.

As Shel hints, customers should *always* own their own data. Sorry Amazon, but this is how it *should* be.

I just looked at the Amazon main web page and I don't see a "Blog" button. Right from the get-go, they are not encouraging "the little people" to engage the company in naked conversations or *any* conversations for that matter.

I heartily encourage Amazon (and all other companies) to join the (presently empty) ranks of "Corporate America 2.0" by adding a blog (or at least a "Blog" button) to their main web page and engaging "the little people" in some truly meaningful *naked* conversations. Amazon, what's your excuse?

-- Jack Krupansky

[Werner]

Shel, first about the login in to leave a comment: it is a standard MT template and you’re the first to indicate any problems with so let me check out what is wrong.

I have kicked off your issues with Amazon to Customer Service, as we always do. We’re a big company and there is lots to improve.

My written response was mainly both you and Robert going public with your views of the meeting. You indicate that “Amazon doesn’t get blogging” and as such paint us as a corporate dinosaur that will forever be running behind the wave. The fact that we are open to more innovation in this space than just blogging and see blogging as part of a bigger package doesn’t mean we don’t “get it” but that we truly understand the role it plays in the context of many other ways of corporate-customers interaction.

If we had promised you a warm and enthusiastic meeting, then I apologize. We frequently get authors to present at Amazon, and if for example this would be a book presentation about a certain economic theory we would expect to have a spirited discussion about the thesis. Not just a presentation but dive deep into the relevant issues and sometimes that means confrontation. You are the first ones to be surprised about that.

After our back and forth online other people are putting up suggestions how blogs could be useful to Amazon, beyond the standard “get your employees to blog” approach. That was the discussion I was expecting to happen in the meeting, but it didn’t. You’re saying it was because of me not being a good host (might be), I believe you guys just didn’t bring the convincing arguments. There were many questions I didn’t ask, i.e. how to deal with the distraction factor that widespread blogging triggers in a company, how to weigh that against the advantages. I felt no need to dive into those as I felt I didn’t get satisfactory answers to early questions.

I respect both of you for the work you are doing. But corporate blogging is a very different game, and in that world you need to be prepared to answer hard critics to make headway. If you can’t handle me (who is actually a proponent), you may have a lot harder time at other places.

[Shel Israel]

Werner,
I went back and reread what I wrote about our meeting. Where did I state that "Amazon did not get it?" In fact we had a slide on specific suggestions for what Amazon could do with blogs. We never got to it. We were not shell-shocked at any time, but we did not get through our presentation. That is not always a bad thing because we prefer dialogue to monolgue--but please do not complain we didn't give you something, if you interupted us too many times to allow us to get to it.

[Geoff]

I'm pretty sure Amazon don't get it. I changed my Amazon email address, all my history just disappeared without warning and I could find no one who could get it back and yet they kept giving me recommendations based on my previous purchases.

[Jack Krupansky]

I'm the one who says that "Amazon doesn't get blogging", and Werner's comments here further convince me that this is truly the case.

Werner refers to "the distraction factor that widespread blogging triggers in a company", making it sound like blogging was Avian Flu or "The Plague".

For the record, even my extremist "Corporate America 2.0" concept wouldn't require "widespread blogging" in the sense of every employee needing their own blog. A lot of what passes for "corporate blogging" does *not* actually result in connecting directly with customers and other stakeholders. A lot of so-called "corporate blogging" probably is a waste, but a lot of that is probably because it's mostly an experiment.

If you evolve blogging properly, I think there is the potential for tremendous leveraging.

For example, if one comment from a customer is responded to by one employee, the resulting conversation might be read by thousands of customers and maybe hundreds of employees, and they all benefit from that one conversation.

Not every customer will feel the need to demand attention every day. In fact, as you gradually accumulate a base of posts and comments over time, you might see far less in the way of customer service calls and email. Blogs are an easier and more friendly way of communicating than FAQs and other "old" forms of storing "knowledge".

Blogs as news feeds will increase the likelihood that more people will have at least scanned the flow of news.

The key is how to encourage and enable a team-oriented approach to blogging, as an alternative to saying that everybody should have a blog and blog every day. Define clear groups and roles and share the burden. Some people may not blog at all and others should be supported for full-time blogging, and the full spectrum between.

As far as customer-facing blogs, simply set up similar groups and once again share the burden. Allow and encourage developers to watch the flow of customer service issues and even comment on them. Allow and encourage members of one department to watch and comment on the flow of other departments. No need to force people to do any of these things -- a lot of people will actually *enjoy* getting information from blogs, whether by reading each post, filtering a feed, and finding relevant information with a Google search. Give customers and other stakeholders options as far as how much of a transparent Amazon they really want to observe.

Sorry, but customer-facing blogging is a serious *opportunity* for Amazon, not a "risk".

The bottom line: Do or die.

To me, the issue is not "get your employees to blog", but "get your company to engage customers and other stakeholders in meaningful naked conversations".

I'm sure everyone at Amazon is very smart, but I hope they're not so arrogant as to presume that the customer is always dumber than they are and unlikely to be a source of innovative ideas for springboarding deeper into the 21st Century. I would respectfully suggest that you give your customers a fair chance to show you what they've got.

-- Jack Krupansky

[Kevin]

Tone and phrasing often convey more than one would realize, especially when the result of that is that people shut down and simply don't want to deal with you. It's not you that's the problem, per se, but the impression that you leave on others.

For example,

"If we had promised you a warm and enthusiastic meeting, then I apologize."

is quite a line to ponder. Especially when that's considered standard operating procedure. There may be a translations problem here, because in English that means that means you expect all meetings to be unenthusiastic and cold and you are completely unapologetic about that.

[anonymous Amazonian]

As an anonymous amazonian, I must say I agree with Jan and Kevin. The stories and communication that comes out of Amazon is more corporate censored than authentic. I think sense that we have to be polished rather than authentic. Which leads me to....

Web 1.0/2.0, it's obvious that Amazon is very web 1.0, and the question is, what does it mean to be agile and web 2.0 ? Is that even important? Does Amazon really need to roll out features with the speed of, say, MySpace? Is execution of orders more important? I'm not giving answers, just asking questions.

I'm not really sure how blogging is a distraction. I'd say that cubes are more of a distraction than blogging is. If Werner is truly worried about productivity, maybe he should propose the adoption of Python/Ruby and other dynamic languages? A few blogs won't hurt us.

[Blake]

One thing that affects this "he said, she said" battle is the general assessment of how much clue each side has.

So, for instance, when you say "You know how many books I've bought from you. I don't because Amazon will not share my own data with me", you might take a look at the "where's my stuff" part of your account, and select "view by item" / "all items ordered".

I'm just generally curious about how much of this whole showdown is an arrogant CTO being challenging, but he knows his stuff combined with a "lucky to be here" author that seized on the opportunity to capitalize on blogging as a social phenomenon and make money on the side doing corporate presentations, but who might not be as well versed on the hard questions.

[chris]

Just FYI, if you want to look at your complete order history, go to:

www.amazon.com/gp/css/homepage.html

...and the very first item is "View by Order" which has the option of "Complete order history by year".

[chris]

gah. hit post before I was ready.

also, the next major subhead is "View by item" which has an option for "all items ordered".

so, it doesn't seem to difficult to own your own data.

[Robert Scoble]

Yesterday, at Amazon, I didn't answer the question that Werner raised very well. I just tried to answer it again here: http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/03/31/much-ado-about-blogging-scoble-you-didnt-answer-the-question/

[Michael Drips]

"I think there's a nice ironic touch to the fact that when I tried to leave a comment on this post by Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon.com, his technology would not allow me to sign in."

I managed to leave a comment. It only required a TypeKey account, just like here on your blog.

Don't you have a clue as to how to blog?

[Eric Giguere]

I must admit that as an author who has just created his first Amazon plog I was absolutely floored by the fact that Amazon was letting me link to external sites. Even though they're not direct links (they open new windows and redirect through Amazon) it's still a step above what you can do with the ProductWikis they recently implemented. Note, however, that only the author can link out.

So in some ways it is a step ahead for Amazon. But it's certainly not a blog in the traditional sense.

[Jason Stamper]

Seems fair enough that Werner should be looking for some hard data to back up the implied value of corporate blogging, but I can equally understand that Shel and Robert have concentrated their efforts on the more qualitative aspects around brand, community, customer service and so on. As an experiment I tried to write an equation that would simply say whether a corporate blog was profitable or a cost centre - you can find my sums on my blog. Be delighted to hear what people think of these fairly rudimentary first attempts at a Blogging Value Index...

[PuReWebDev]

Thanks for posting about Amazon. I do some development myself with their e-commerce api and even started messing around with probably the first ever Amazon Associates Video Podcast http://www.youtube.com/user/PuReWebDev thanks, PuReWebDev