Gerrard Kaonga
Jeff Bezos wanted to prove a point to his team when he called customer service during a meeting and wasn’t bothered about how awkward the stunt was.
If you own a billion-dollar business, you really want to make sure that things are working as best as possible.
You wouldn’t continue to bring in ridiculous amount of money if you let things slip, no giant is too big to fall, after all.
Former Amazon CEO and billionaire Jeff Bezos really wanted to make sure his company was in the best shape possible in the early days of his reign.
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Speaking on the Lex Fridman Podcast back in December 2023, he recalled a stunt he pulled to get his point across to his staff, back when Amazon was in its earlier days.
He explained that the data they had was showing that customers were only waiting 1 minute before connecting to someone from customer service if they called.
However, he had anecdotal evidence from complaints that this simply wasn’t the case.
During a meeting when one staff member tried to convince him that everything was all fine and dandy, he wasn’t having it and decided to prove otherwise.
Speaking on the podcast he said: “'I have a saying which is: when the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right.
“It doesn’t mean you just slavishly follow the anecdotes then, it means you go examine the data.
“'It's usually not that the data is being miscollected, it's usually that you're not measuring the right thing.”
The 60 year-old Bezos explained that he then called customer service to see just how long the wait would be.
He laughed as he said he and the team just waited in silence.
Bezos then explained that they were waiting around for 10 minutes before they got connected. You can only imagine how smug Bezos’ face would have been when he felt he proved his point.
He added: “It dramatically made my point that something was wrong with the data collection. That set off a whole chain of events where we started measuring it right.
“That is an example of truth telling. That is an uncomfortable thing to do but you have to seek the truth even when it is uncomfortable.”
People on social media certainly seemed to find the whole stunt hilarious.
One user wrote: “Imagine sitting in the boardroom waiting in silence for 10min for customer service to pick up after you just told Jeff the data shows it is only 60 seconds and everything is fine lol.”
Another added: “Imagine working in the call centre and Jeff rings you himself hahaha'
“Sounds like someone massaging the numbers to please the boss,” joked another.