Amazon local - does anyone know what this is?

I have been an amazon (www.amazon.co.uk) customer for a number of years not put off by documentaries showing the pressures of the workforce but sold on the range of products and price. The store and corresponding services have grown beyond recognition from the original offering swallowing up businesses along the way. Since the start of this year I have seen a new product splattered all over my inbox from amazon for Amazon local. Why I have started receiving these emails I am not sure and the value proposition is not clear I assume it is more of the groupon type discounts that I steer well clear of. As a frequent amazon customer I would have expected them to value the position of the brand and not want to risk this with an existing customer base but they seem to have decided to start pushing this new service uninvited. As it is clearly still amazon I will associate it with the main company but at the moment as I have no idea why I am getting this or how it meets any consumer need I have the only impact it is having is annoying me and threatening the value I put on the main amazon brand. Epic fail. 

Amazon email design quality challenges affecting customer experience

Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk) may be a monster in the world of e-commerce offering everything from iPads to surf boards but their email design has fallen well behind in terms of delivering a quality experience. In an earlier blog I wrote about the unexpected gift concept from Amazon which sought to delight (http://goo.gl/2mnKmY) but with their email notification they strive to fail. The emails when read on a mobile device have the most basic design with poor structure and result in the recipient having no desire to open and read the content.  With a boxy design and mismatched colours and fonts it easily gets dismissed. With the company investing so hard in a responsive web site and dedicated native mobile applications to follow this up with the most basic of emails seems a waste. For epic customer experience Amazon need to invest in a better email provision to hold the customer post purchase. 

The unexpected gift to delight a customer

Companies struggle now to surprise customers with the customer experience. Expectation is generally very high and there and numerous forums where customers can vent about their poor and unsatisfactory service. So to surprise a customer and create an epic experience they were not expecting is becoming increasingly difficult. Amazon are trialling a new incentive for their customers by offering post purchase gifts in the form of credit on a future purchase. This goes a step beyond the lazy email offering you "10% off your next order over £57" and gives customers a free gift rewarding them for their custom. What makes this more valuable in terms of epic customer experience is that it is a surprise. It is an email that attempts to delight the customer and even if the credit is only £10 it makes a lasting impression. This could be extended into the realms of gamification where customers can win back the value of their goods in a pinball extra ball style opportunity. Surprising customers is a great way to create more epic customer experiences. 

Is there ever too much choice

When searching for a product on a website is having a wealth of choice always best?  Websites such as Amazon provide search facilities and filtering options for results but do we really want a shop front for everything that means even the most unique item delivers 3,567 results?  Even including customer reviews only increases this and leads to further procrastination. A tight well selected product selection certainly has some strong selling points. Epic customer experience can more readily be achieved where stock is closely managed in terms of the range of items. Imagine searching through the 3,567 results and then reading and comparing the customer reviews to then find the colour / size is out of stock. Painful and irritating. Promote what you can sell and make it smarter and faster for customers to find products. Product segmentation with specific "stores" makes shopping simpler.