How Amazon Help Delivers On Demand Customer Service on Twitter
Amazon.com Inc. needs no introduction. A global consumer-tech giant, the largest Internet retailer in the world, the worlds largest provider of cloud infrastructure services, the fourth most valuable public company in the world, and the eighth largest employer in the United States.
Founded by Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com started life as a humble online bookstore accessed by the public over a 56k dial-up modem, on Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer 1.0 during those heady days of the mid-90's.
Over the last two decades, Amazon has gone from strength to strength. Building on its foundations of convenience, Amazon has diversified across a broad range of innovative products and services, capitalising on mass market opportunities in consumer technology and e-commerce, experiencing massive growth as a result.
Super Saturday or Panic Saturday is the last Saturday before Christmas, a major day of revenue where retailers tend to compete with each other, offering significant discounts and extended store hours in an attempt to attract customers and drive impulse buying. Super Saturday marks the end of the shopping season in which retailers and many customers believe begins on Black Friday.
With a bold mission to be “Earth’s most customer centric company”, we decided to take a close look at how the Amazon Help team delivered customer service on Twitter over the most popular day in the calendar year for retail shopping, Saturday 23rd December 2017, most commonly known as Super Saturday.
Are you interested in improving customer experience, building trust with your customers and gaining competitive advantage? Get in-touch to discuss how you can become truly customer first with our market leading social customer service intelligence and branding solutions.
Inbound Mention Volume
Looking at HelpHandles™ historical data, Amazon Help were significantly busier on Super Saturday, receiving a +62% (1,223) more mentions to its help handle over Black Friday.
Black Friday Inbound Mentions Amazon Help
Super Saturday Inbound Mentions Amazon Help
Over a period of 24 hours, Amazon Help received a total of 3,189 mentions to their help handle placing them in the top 10% of help handles by volume on Twitter.
Response Rate
On Super Saturday, the Amazon Help support team responded to 43% (1,371) of mentions received to their help handle…
Responses under 30mins
…of which 97% (1,330) of those responses were made quickly in under 30 mins.
Twitter Support Coverage
The Amazon Help team were busy over Super Saturday, with customer service peaking at 9am GMT time responding to customers at a rate of 110 replies per hour and again at 3pm, GMT with 100 replies per hour.
Top Hashtags
Amazon customers were a demanding bunch over Super Saturday….
Sentiment
Many customers were left frustrated on Super Saturday with what seemed to be problems with Amazon’s estimated delivery times. Despite this the Amazon Help customer service team did a great job in reaching out and providing timely, assistance to customers offering resolutions and alternative means of correspondence where necessary.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that the likes of Amazon have created a consumer culture where expectation is at an all time high, putting companies who cannot provide on demand products and services at risk to those that can.
From our analysis of Amazon Help on Twitter, providing on demand products and services is still a challenge, its certainly not plain sailing with some customers experiencing delays and issues with their orders. It’s obviously tough to deliver to such high expectations, but that doesn’t stop Amazon from relentlessly pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, and investing in supporting their customers on real-time channels like Twitter, providing round the clock, open communication to those who need it, outside of their own-ecosystem is just one example of Amazon’s commitment to customers.
What I admire the most about Amazon is their ability to constantly innovate, adapt and set the bar higher— failure is not an option. This is the company that is committed to commercialising rapid drone delivery, developing cashier-less stores, and bringing deliveries inside of the home, making the inaccessible, accessible and the unbelievable, believable.
So, where does that leave the rest of us? Well it would seem fitting to end this story by quoting Jeff Bezos in his April 2016 letter to Amazon shareholders…
“Jeff, what does Day 2 look like?”
That’s a question I just got at our most recent all-hands meeting. I’ve been reminding people that it’s Day 1 for a couple of decades. I work in an Amazon building named Day 1, and when I moved buildings, I took the name with me. I spend time thinking about this topic.
“Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.”
Are you interested in improving customer experience, building trust with your customers and gaining competitive advantage? Get in-touch to discuss how you can become truly customer first with our market leading social customer service intelligence and branding solutions.
Dean McCann
Founder & CEO of HelpHandles™
www.helphandles.com
dean@helphandles.com
