In the April 2012 issue of Forbes Magazine, Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon.com shares his top ten leadership lessons. While I certainly agreed with all of them, #9 caught my attention because it was so atypical. Bezos says:
“Everyone has to be able to work in a call center.”
Bezos asks thousands of Amazon managers to attend two days of call-center training each year. He is keenly aware that complaints can be devastating in the age of viral tweets and blogs, so he wants everyone in the company to never lose sight of the very reason for their success – their customers. Sitting in on call-center training means that his managers always have empathy and humility towards the customer. Oh, and by the way, the rule applies to him as well: he attends two days of call-center training every year too!
So what are you doing to make sure that you (and your leadership team) never lose sight of your customer? Please share, and also tell us if you think your organization is missing the mark in this regard.