Jeff Bezos recalled the 'uncomfortable' moment he rang up Amazon customer service to prove a point mid-meeting.
When you're responsible for a $2.07 trillion company, time really is money, as the old saying goes.
Former Amazon CEO Bezos didn't become a billionaire overnight, and in the company's early days, he wanted to make sure Amazon was in the best shape possible.
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It's widely known the 60-year-old is a fan of both data-driven and anecdotal measurements to assess and improve his business. And in one meeting, he decided to test the anecdotal evidence himself in what made for a very uncomfortable moment.
Speaking on the Lex Fridman podcast in December 2023, he relived the moment he put in the call to customer service, back when Amazon was in its earlier days.
He explained that the data they had was showing that customers were only waiting 60 seconds before connecting to someone from customer service when they called.
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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 took matters into his own hands.
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."
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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 - ten times longer than the data suggested. How awkward.
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.
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“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 amusing.
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.”
And another added: “Imagine working in the call centre and Jeff rings you himself hahaha."
Ellie Kemp