How to Answer Interview Questions about Amazon Leadership Principle “Customer Obsession”
If you're about to interview at Amazon you should know the 16 Amazon Leadership Principles.
Amazon asks behavioral interview questions that use the leadership principles.
The first Amazon leadership principle is “Customer Obsession”
I recommend that everyone, no matter what role they're interviewing for, prepare answers for the customer obsession questions. This is really and truly Amazonians' favorite principle, so you need to be able to show you understand it and take it seriously.
Amazon Leadership Principle #1: Customer Obsession
This is how Amazon explains the principle:
Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.
So what does this Amazon leadership principle mean? It means customers are the top priority.
Here is another way of understanding it. If you are obsessed with customers, you will:
Collect data on and deeply understand what your customer wants and needs
Ask, “Is what I’m working on helping my customers?”
Rigorously pursue customer feedback
“WOW’ your customers
Provide products and solutions that exceed customer expectations
Remove steps in your process that don't add value
Treat your customers like they’re #1
What are examples of “Customer Obsession” interview questions?
I've explained what this Amazon leadership principle is about, so now how will this principle show up in your interview? Are they going to ask, “Are you obsessed with customers?” Well, they might ask this exact question, but the questions aren't usually so straightforward. There are various ways you might get asked about this principle.
When you’re working with a large number of customers, it’s tricky to deliver excellent service to all of them. How do you prioritize different customer needs?
Tell me about a time you handled a difficult customer. What did you do? How did you manage the customer? What was her/his reaction? What was the outcome?
Most of us at one time have felt frustrated or impatient when dealing with customers. Can you tell me about a time when you felt this way and how you dealt with it?
When was a time you had to balance the needs of the customer with the needs of the business? How did you approach the situation? What were your actions? What was the end result?
Give me an example of a change you implemented in your current team or organization to meet the needs of your customers. What has been the result?
Tell me about a time a customer wanted one thing but you felt they needed something else. What was the situation and what was the action you took?
When do you think it’s ok to push back or say no to an unreasonable customer request?
Tell me about a time you used customer feedback to change the way you worked. Why did you take the action you did? What was the outcome?
Tell me about a time you had to compromise in order to satisfy a customer.
How do you get to an understanding of what the customer’s needs are?
How do you honestly pursue customer feedback, not just solicit them for compliments?
How do you wow your customers?
How do you develop client relationships?
These questions do not use the words "customer obsession" but they are asking about the idea behind the principle, which is caring about customers and how you make customer experience a priority.
How to answer the “Customer Obsession” questions
You need to tell a story, which you can structure using the PAR technique (Problem/Action/Result).
All of these questions need to be answered with a story about a time in your past work experience, even if you get asked “How do you wow your customers?” or another question beginning with “how.” “How” questions tend to confuse people because they seem like the interviewer is asking you to answer more generally. In fact, to give a strong answer, you need to talk about something specific. You should answer this question with something like, “I try to go above and beyond to serve my customers [general statement about how you approach dealing with customers]. For example, once last year I had to...[a specific story that proves the general statement]…” In other words, don't give just a general answer that describes your personality or work habits, also give a specific example about something that happened to you at work that involves helping a customer. The general statement + the specific example = a good story.
Interviewees sometimes miss how their actions relate to the customer experience. Even if you aren’t in a customer-facing role like sales, you still work for the person who clicks “Buy.” In your interview answers, show that you understand your customers and their needs. You don’t want to sound like someone who just does the tasks assigned to you as part of your job. In your “Customer Obsession” stories, show how your actions have an impact on the customer experience, directly or indirectly.
You want to show you’re not so focused on doing what you’re told that you never take a step back to understand who uses the product or service. Yes, your boss or another stakeholder might be considered your “customer” because you have to make them happy, but in the end, the customer who pays for your products or services keeps your company in business.
Avoid clichés such as “the customer is always right.” Showing “Customer Obsession” doesn’t mean you always do exactly what the customer asks. True “Customer Obsession” is about understanding the problem behind a customer request. Solving that problem might include something the customer never even imagined.
For inspiration, consider reading about Jeff Bezos’s obsession with customers. A quick Google search on the topic will return many examples. I like this article on Inc., which quotes Bezos as saying, “What matters to me is, do we provide the best customer service. Internet shminternet. That doesn’t matter.” Note how, in that interview, Bezos connects opening new warehouses and hiring new employees back to servicing customers. Everything Amazon does is about the customer.
How many examples do I need for each Amazon leadership principle?
Most people say that you should have two examples for each principle. That is a good benchmark, but what if you get asked four customer obsession questions? Will you have enough stories to answer them all? In the onsite interview the interviewers will divide the principles up and each take two or three, so in one interview you may have more than two questions about a principle. What will you do if that happens? I suggest that you practice using some questions you’ve developed for other principles to answer customer obsession questions. The ownership answers usually work for customer obsession, and vice versa. I think it’s a better idea to think of having four answers for each of those principles than just two for each, or having a group of answers you can tailor for the different principles depending on what you get asked.
Sample answers for Customer Obsession questions
Question: Tell me about a time you handled a difficult customer. What did you do? How did you manage the customer? What was her/his reaction? What was the outcome?
Answer given by a Sales Manager:
“When I was a Sales Manager at X, we had a group of unhappy customers. We’d sold them a weed killer that hadn’t worked well. As farmers, they relied on the weed killer, and they were threatening to take their business to our competitor. I had to try to keep them as customers. I knew retaining them would be hard because our product had been defective and had cost them money. I had a meeting with all of them where I listened to their complaints. I listened to each of them and responded calmly. I explained to them what had happened, which was definitely our fault, and apologized. In the end, they agreed to give us one more chance, even though I couldn’t offer them a refund, since I didn’t have the ability to do that.”
This answer uses the PAR structure and is therefore easy to follow, but it’s lacking in detail. In general, you want your answers to be about two minutes long. This answer is about half that. Let’s revise it. We’ll keep the PAR structure, but we’ll add some more detail to demonstrate the candidate’s “Customer Obsession.” We can also emphasize skills that will be relevant to the job she is applying for – dealing with unhappy clients, client communication, and conflict management.
Here’s the revised version:
Problem: When I was a Sales Manager at X, we had a group of unhappy customers. We’d sold them a weed killer that hadn’t worked as advertised. The product worked, but not as well as we said it would. As farmers, they relied on the weed killer, and they were threatening to take their business to our competitor. I had to try to keep them as customers. I knew retaining them would be hard because our product had failed to deliver and had cost them money.
Action: Relationships were especially important to these customers, and the primary component of a customer relationship, in my experience, is trust. By selling them a faulty product, I had betrayed that trust. Repairing it would not be simple and would require a lot of time, time that I would otherwise be using to sell to other customers. But I thought the time would be worth it, because my reputation was on the line, not to mention the reputation of the company I worked for.
Restoring trust is about admitting you were wrong and, above all, listening. I had a series of meetings with the farmers, where my only goal was to listen. Not to try to sell to them. Not to promise we’d do better. Just listen. I first met with them as a group, and then I met separately with several of them. I listened to each of them and responded calmly. I explained to them what had happened, which was definitely our fault, and apologized. In the course of our conversations, the farmers became less frustrated with the situation and were ready to look ahead.
Result: While I didn’t have the ability to give them a refund for the defective product, in the end, they agreed to give us one more chance. I knew that I still needed to deliver a quality product to completely restore trust, but not losing them as customers was a major victory.
I’ve added a few things to this revised version of the story. First, there is more detail about the problem, i.e., the product had not worked as well as advertised. Second, the Action section needed a lot of work. It was too short. The Action section should typically be the longest part of your answer, and it’s your place to show your skills. In this revised version of the story, the Sales Manager shows that she understands what’s important to the customer (relationships), and she devises a strategy around that. She implies that fixing the customer relationship will cost her money in the immediate term (“time that I would otherwise be using to sell to other customers”), but she does it anyway because she’s thinking about the longer-term implications. This revised version is much better than the original.
Question: How do you get an understanding of what the customer’s needs are?
Answer given by a Senior Digital Product Manager:
“I use quantitative and qualitative approaches. Quantitative is looking at data to derive insights. Data can be what are customers doing when they use your product and, if you’re working on a digital product, you could use an approach like web analytics. With qualitative approaches, you can simply ask them about their needs about how they use your product, but a better way is to immerse yourself into their problem space and ask where does the product fit into their daily life today? For example, in looking at my top customers, in terms of the customers most engaged on my platform, I can see that content about IT certification is very popular. As a result, we started doing online trainings and certifications. So instead of just a course or video, we do live trainings now. Those turned out to be really popular. So it seems that anything we give them in terms of IT certification is really popular. So I’ve started to talk to customers about the role of certification in their workplace. It turns out that getting certified is important because it’s tied to getting promoted.”
This answer could be improved. How could you make it better? Let’s break it down into P-A-R first.
“I use quantitative and qualitative approaches. Quantitative is looking at data to derive insights. Data can be what are customers doing when they use your product and, if you’re working on a digital product, you could use an approach like web analytics. Qualitative approaches you can simply ask them about their needs about how they use your product, but a better way is to immerse yourself into their problem space and ask where does the product fit into their daily life today?”
This is the first part of the story, but it is not actually the Problem/Situation. It’s what I call “general stuff” or “extra stuff we don’t need.” Many people add this type of info at the start of answers – but it isn’t actually “Problem” stuff. It’s not really giving you the situation.
How could you fix this?
P: I use both quantitative and qualitative methods to find out what my customers need. [I kept one sentence of the general stuff as a lead in – you could use more, but don’t ramble on.] For example, last month I wanted to find out what type of content was most popular on our site so we could do more of it.
A: I looked at data on my top customers, in terms of the customers most engaged on my platform, and I could see that content about IT certification is very popular. So I started to talk to customers about the role of certification in their workplace. It turns out that getting certified is important because it’s tied to getting promoted. As a result we started doing online trainings for the certifications. So instead of just a course or video, we do live trainings now as part of the educational product line up.
R: Those trainings turned out to be popular. So it seems that anything we give them in terms of IT certification is really popular.
I’ve eliminated the extra stuff in the first section that wasn’t really related to the situation. You can see how applying the P-A-R technique and eliminating what didn’t fit into that structure resulted in a much clearer answer.
Is this a great answer now? No, it’s just average. You could actually improve this answer further by adding more details and/or data in each of the three sections. Although the first revision helped, the improved version was still a little light on concrete data. Any kind of details or numbers you have will make your answer sound more believable. This version is even better:
P: I’m currently working at X, and we have a site that is a learning platform primarily for enterprise customers. I use both quantitative and qualitative methods to find out what the customers want and need. For example, earlier this year, I wanted to find out what type of content was most popular on our site so we could do more of it.
A: I looked at data on my top customers, in terms of the customers most engaged on my platform, and I could see that content about IT certification was very popular. I wanted to dig deeper on this topic. So I started to talk to customers about the role of certification in their workplace. It turns out that getting certified is important because it’s tied to career growth, most specifically getting promoted. I also asked them what certifications they wanted the most.
Based on this research, we decided to increase our product offerings in this area. We already had courses and videos about certifications, but we added webinars to the educational product lineup because different formats appeal to a wider audience. To reach more users, we needed to diversify how the material was presented. We also increased the number and type of certifications we offered in areas where we saw the most interest – cloud-related technologies and security, for example.
R: Those trainings turned out to be popular. The average user now spends 23% more time per month on our learning platform, most of which can be attributed to our new IT certification-related materials.
Here’s another example for that question given by someone from a different role.
Question: How do you figure out what a customer needs?
Answer given by a UX Designer:
“When I joined the team at X to work on their cloud product, I found out that there had been no customer research done prior to release of the first version of the product. It had been primarily designed based on conversations with sales engineers. A quick usability tests proved my suspicions – customers found the product frustrating to use. One customer called the product a “chore to use”; another said it was “exhausting.”
I met with the customer success team to get a list of customers who had purchased this product. I then proposed a face-to-face user research meeting with them so I could understand these customers and get feedback on the version they were using. Before I visited, I created a test plan of questions I intended to ask and circulated it to the working team so that I could include questions they intended to ask.
I visited four customers and interviewed seven end users who were the primary users of this product. My selection criteria were as follows:
· Users who were using the cloud product currently (5)
· Users who had used it before and are no longer using it (5)
What I learned from my research was that there were two distinct personas who were intended to use it, the Manager persona and the Executive persona. The Manager wanted to have a much more detailed view into their subscriber activity and the Executive wanted to get a very high-level view. Apart from personas, I also learned that there were three focus areas of how the marketing teams worked (acquisition, upsell, and retention).
I synthesized this research and created a customer needs matrix, which acted as a key input to the product management prioritization roadmap. Our NPS score improved by 20 points as a result of this work.”
This story is good because it uses a clear structure and has a good story that answers the question. He is professional, straightforward, and direct. He weaves into his story phrases that make him sound like a subject matter expert – “usability tests,” “user research meeting,” “test plan,” “end users,” and “personas.” He shows that he knows how to apply his craft to taking care of customers – “Customer Obsession.”
Question: How do you show customer obsession?
A Senior Digital Marketer’s answer:
“An example of how I regard customers is from when I had just become the Regional Manager at X bank in India in 2015. We were having problems retaining customers because our online services, in particular the online banking app, weren’t as sophisticated as our in-person services were even though more of our customers were wanting to bank online. I realized this couldn’t continue and began a push to revamp the app along with the IT department. It took us a year of product development but in the end we rolled out the new online banking app and service plan and it was well received. This and effort from other departments helped the organization notch customer engagement of 75 from 55 percent earlier over the next two years. We improved the region’s profitability by 15 percent.”
This is a good answer because he describes a specific problem and how he solved it. He also includes the results, which demonstrate that his solution was good for both the customer and the business.
The Action section is light on details though, which is a problem many candidates struggle with when forming stories. This story would be better if he had said what the problems were with the online app specifically and what was included in the new app that hadn’t been there before and why those features were chosen. The Action section is the part of the story where you show how you made a difference. When you come up with your own stories, make sure you put in enough details.
I like the data that this candidate includes in his Results section. It’s good if you can add data to your answers, both technical data and/or financial data. The data helps your answer sound like it was a real situation and also makes it sound like you have a high level of expertise. In other words, using data makes you sound smarter and more competent than if you don’t talk about data, so it’s good to have data in any answer.
Question: Tell me about a time where you put the customer first, regardless of what peers or management directed. What was the outcome? How did this impact day-to-day interaction with your peers and/or management.
Answer given by a Cloud Architect:
P: I worked with a mid-market client at X Co., when they were just making the transition to Azure cloud. Initially, they were just interested in lifting and shifting one of their web apps to the cloud for testing and development. They had paid less than $10K, making it a relatively small account. Management didn’t want me spending too much time getting them onboarded, but it was a relatively complex job and I wanted it done right.
A: I understood management’s concerns, but I had done the architectural assessment and knew the client needs. My primary concern was doing right by the customer, but if I’m being completely honest, I saw significant upside opportunities. For one, while we had been contracted to migrate just the one web app to the cloud, the client in fact had a whole suite of apps that could eventually be migrated, if the first migration went well. Secondly, the client was well connected and would provide a reference for other work.
To convince management that this job was worth more time than usual for such a small account, I walked them through the hidden upsides. Since I had been working closely with the client I asked if I could spend time on this project until after go-live. My manager agreed, and I spent more time working on the project.
R: As a result of my close work with the client, the lift and shift was finished ahead of schedule. I wrote a proposal for the client to work on the other apps, which we ended up moving ahead with, and ultimately, the total contract value of the account surpassed six figures. That job influenced how we operated going forward, and fundamentally changed the role of Solution Architect at my company. The job was no longer just about meeting the exact requirements of the contract. We began engaging with customer needs more holistically, always seeking to deepen the relationship.
There is a lot to like about this story. The Solutions Architect shows that he can turn “Customer Obsession” into revenue opportunities. He also demonstrates that he’s willing to fight for his ideas, which speaks to one of the other leadership principles (“Have Backbone”).
