Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once dialled his own customer service line during a meeting to prove an uncomfortable point to his staff.
The firm's former CEO has always been driven by customer satisfaction - evident in tales we've heard of how he used to always have a spare chair at every meeting to symbolize the consumer.
For Bezos, the customer is king - and it's that philosophy that has led Amazon to becoming a business that is valued at more than $2 trillion.
You get the point.
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During one meeting, Bezos caught out some of his high-up staff members after having cottoned on to how they had let slip his values and were lying to customers, claiming that those with issues could connect with a call handler in just one minute.
Of course, the now-billionaire had insurmountable evidence that this just simply wasn't the case - thanks to the sheer number of complaints they had received.
Speaking on the Lex Fridman Podcast back in December 2023, he recalled how he pulled the stunt to get his point across to his staff - with one employee trying to swindle him into believing that everything was all good on the customer service end of the business.
"I have a saying which is: when the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right," Bezos explained. "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 miss-collected, it's usually that you're not measuring the right thing."
61-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.
Topics: Jeff Bezos, Amazon, Business, Podcast
Joe Yates