Customer Intimacy 2.0 @ Amazon.com – How Leading New Economy Businesses Handle Customer Intimacy

Amazon.com is a business driven towards scale. Since its inception as the world’s biggest book store, Amazon leveraged its size to drive breadth and, above all, low cost for its consumers. While Apple (as discussed previously) pursues the classic differentiation strategy, Amazon is a classic low-cost player.

Amazon's traditional book selling business has three touch points with customers. 

1. The first is virtual, where folks surf around in their web browsers for inventory. 
2. The second interaction is at the checkout transaction or “shopping cart”; 
3. The third is upon opening the box that a customer has ordered. 

Is there any room for customer intimacy?  Upon closer look, I see the virtual realm chocked-full of chances to entertain, listen and react to customers. Amazon thoroughly tracks and customizes the user experience. This is a tremendous capability for the business and adds huge values to customers as well.

By comparison, how often do brick & mortar retailers undertake customer intimacy in the three user links mentioned above (searching for product, checkout and delivery)? Rummaging around a store for products is likely to be constrained by the physical location of inventory. Obviously not true on amazon.com. Further, could most retailers present you with a basket of recommended items right when you walk in? Amazon’s recommended list does this. 

At checkout, Amazon has what every business would love to have in its CRM. At this stage, they’ve remembered your payment preference and where you’ve received products in the past. Even the delivery is a tailored experience for the customer. One-touch simplicity allows customers to avoid having to lug home a huge box. Lastly, the breadth of products certainly reflects an aspect of customer intimacy. In this regard, the user has an almost limitless opportunity to purchase a wide variety of goods in one place. 

In all, customer intimacy isn’t happening the way it used to. New business models and digitization of interactions offer new ways for businesses to mesh with customers. The increasing complexity is daunting. Leaders like Amazon and Apple have untangled the complexity and are controlling it to their advantage.