- We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we arethe hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of thecustomer experience a little bit better.
—Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO
How does Amazon.com soeffortlessly connect “zillions” of people with “zigabytes” of product information?The answer, in part, is through use of advanced knowledge-management (KM)techniques. We in the eLearning field can learn a lot from how Amazon approachesthe relationship between customers and information.
Enhancing value by using KM principles
Most people think of Amazon asone of the world’s most successful eCommerce companies, and it is. From thebeginning, Amazon determined that the user experience—the ability of itscustomers to find what they want, when they want it, quickly and easily—was akey to success. But that wasn’t enough. If the system could help customersaccomplish their goals in an intuitive and personalized way, it would add even morevalue to the experience.
That’s where knowledge managementhelps. Whether they call it KM or not, Amazon uses KM principles and practicesto add significant value for their customers in many ways:
- Oneportal, one interface. Everything we buy from Amazon, all the business wedo with them is through the same portal. Food, electronics, books, clothing—itdoesn’t matter. One-stop shopping. The portal is the same and the userexperience is the same. This breeds familiarity and comfort for users, allowingless anxiety as they explore new areas of the site. Imagine if the Amazonbookstore and the Amazon technology store had different web addresses. Imagineif you had to first figure out which store to go to before you could shop.
Implications for us: A single portal andinterface provides the employees with a common, familiar, and easy-to-usegateway to workplace knowledge in all forms. Courseware, eLearning, website,videos, on-the-job tools—it all shows up in the same place.
- Consistentpresentation. From product specifications to reviews, they displayinformation for every product in the same way and in the same order, whereverpossible. This comes from outstanding content management, where they compose informationand then publish it to users in a consistent manner. An added benefit is theability to track and archive each and every information “nugget.”
Implications for us: Workers should nothave to figure out how to read or interpret content because it displaysdifferently. Metaphors, flowcharts, and other organizing structures have value,but if every site has its own presentation strategy, requiring its own learningcurve, that value significantly diminishes and can be disconcerting to users. Consistencymatters, a lot.
- Modularcontent. They organize every page on Amazon in easy-to-read sections. Noelaborate PDF books to comb through. They sometimes provide additional detail,but they present it as an option (e.g., “click here”) rather than a barrier tocross to get to what you want.
Implications for us: This enablesworkers to quickly access only the content they need and relieves them fromwasting time scanning elaborate documents or indices to find what they need. Remember,it’s not about searching; it’s about finding.Anything we can do to help people find what they need—faster—is a good thing.
- Distributedupstream content creation. Although Amazon appears to control everything wesee, for the most part, the product companies, where the real expertise is, actuallygenerate the content. Adhering to Amazon’s design standards, writing styles,and other practices and policies, the content looks like it came from the sameplace, making it more usable.
Implications for us: By moving contentcreation to the source, the responsibility of content completeness, relevance,and accuracy also moves to the most accountable party. It also empowers SMEs.
- Almostmagical personalization. What strikes most Amazon customers as so amazingis the way the site seems to know them. The more we use the site, the better itknows us. It can then remind us of our history, recommend products we mightlike, and connect us to additional information it knows we are looking for. That’swhy we willingly register on the site so that Amazon gets to know us, becausewe recognize the value of this service. (Amazon.com is smart enough to do thiswithout registration, but registration makes it much more personal.)
Implications for us: Productivity andefficiency is enhanced when the system has capabilities to “know” users andprovide the most important content—forthem—at the moment of need.
- Crowdsourcing.With features like customer-provided ratings, reviews (including most and leasthelpful), and images, plus an analysis of what customers “like you” previously bought,or bought together, Amazon builds knowledge and awareness in users. Numerousonline-shopping sites have emulated Amazon, the archetype of many of thesesocial features.
Implications for us: A sense ofcommunity without formal communities of practice.
- Insanelyeasy and consistent transactions. Buying something from Amazon? Putting aproduct on hold? Requesting more information? No matter what you are lookingat, the process is the same. You quickly become comfortable with the system. Thereare no curveballs.
Implications for us: After contentvalidity, ease of use will be the most critical aspect of any KM effort. Arethe transactions your people have with your LMS, eLearning, and other resourcesas easy and consistent?
- Subscriptions,alerts, and reminders. Don’t want to scan Amazon every day for a particularproduct or service? Ask the system to remind you. Or join a subscription listfor regular updates as they become available. Be “in the know” without evenasking a question!
Implications for us: Let the system dothe searching! Combined with personalization, the KM system can improveproductivity and awareness of new information without repetitive and exhaustingsearches. This improves productivity.
- Feedback.Amazon is one of the most successful eCommerce sites in getting users toprovide meaningful feedback. Why? Because the company values what customershave to say and it knows that feedback provides value back to customers. Itplaces feedback right on the product’s front page and gives readers many waysto parse and sort the information to their liking. It even allows readers(shoppers) to rate the reviewers! This information is not just for the benefitof future customers, it also allows Amazon to improve its services and theproduct companies to improve their products.
Implications for us: User feedback onthe value of content is one of the most effective ways to gauge KMeffectiveness. It is much more impactful than page visits or downloads, forexample. It also helps users to quickly distinguish important and usefulcontent based on feedback from their peers.
- Reducedservicing. Calls to Amazon’s call center are reduced because they strive sohard to make its site as user friendly and as comprehensive as possible. Thisis a tremendous cost saver for the company and results in higher customersatisfaction. So good is the information about most products on Amazon, thatpeople often reference it even if they intend to buy elsewhere.
Implications for us: Anything that canreduce call center or email inquiries, even a little, can result in tremendouscost savings.
- Performance-centered.Need to cancel or change your order, change the shipping or payment method,return an item, or find out what you bought a year ago? Amazon provides a clearpath to action for all the tasks customers need to accomplish.
Implications for us: Moving from atopic-centered approach to a performance- or task-centered approach will bevery beneficial to workers as they seek to perform their jobs more effectively.
- Greatonline help. Go to Amazon.com and click on “Help.” Easy to use, easy toread, easy to follow. Once again, this adds to the customer experience,increasing their satisfaction and their productivity, and lowers Amazon’scosts.
Implications for us: “Help” is, in fact,KM. Anything that improves the help function on any tool or software will bebeneficial to worker productivity. Are we prone to building solutions andforgetting to include a good help resource? Unfortunately, too often, theanswer is yes.
- Mobility.Amazon.com, and its associated apps, is available anytime and anywhere, and onany device. No business hours to worry about.
Implications for us: Essential for theincreasingly mobile worker. Some current estimates place millennials, the firstgeneration to grow up with mobile devices, at close to 30% of the US workforce,and growing.
How does your intranet stack up?
Look at your organization’sintranet, likely the primary access point to business, customer, product,technical, HR, training, and other information. How easy is it to use? Howaccurate is it? Does it improve over time? Does it know its users and what theyneed? Does it help them do their job better and more efficiently? If the answerto any of these questions is “no” or “could be better” you have a knowledge-managementproblem. And if you have a knowledge-management problem, you likely havelearning problems as well. And if you have learning problems, you almostcertainly have performance problems.
What makes Amazon.com brilliantis not just how it manages content; lots of sites do this well (examplesinclude WebMD, Wikipedia, Flipboard, MyYahoo, and many more), but how itadjusts to users’ needs and interests, and how it connects users withinformation provided by others (the crowd). What if your intranet was more likethis? What if you could incorporate this into your learning strategy? What ifyour company’s process, product, technical, and strategic knowledge wereaccessible in an easy-to-use way, uniformly, and consistently? What if, likeAmazon, your organization’s intranet got to know you, the types of content youneed, and when you need it? What if it could remind you when new content isavailable and hook you up with others who are interested in the same things youare? How would all this change your organizational-learning strategy? How wouldall this change you? Theopportunities are staggering.
It’s genius!
Amazon.comis a multi-billion dollar operation and its web-based services took many yearsto perfect. While this may be beyond the reach of most of us, it does not meanwe shouldn’t consider the model. Just think of how much more valuable our webresources could be—for business and for learning—if we just added a little bitof Amazon genius to the mix.
