Figure 2: Why it’s always Day 1: Jeff Bezos’ open letter — Figure 2 Why it’s *always* Day 1: Jeff Bezos’ open letter

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, has an interesting perspective on this challenge. He talks about the importance of always remaining a ‘Day 1’ company and not a ‘Day 2’ company. According to Bezos, ‘Day 1’ companies are intimately connected to their customers’ needs and never stand still. They eschew proxies and are naturally cautious of relying solely on customer research – they take the time to speak directly to customers and understand the real issues behind the headlines. ‘Day 2’ companies are those who through their disinterest in the customer have already embarked on the process of decline, relying too much on research and benchmarking, too satisfied with their own performance. Bezos is particularly instructive for those CEOs seeking to understand the nature of their role in today’s digitized economy.

A brand is what a brand does

The biggest single consequence of the digital revolution on business has been to shine a light on the conduct and behaviour of individual businesses. If you give customers consistently poor service it is likely that a lot of people, courtesy of social media, will hear about it very quickly. If you espouse a position publicly but then do something different behind the scenes, the chances are that customers will find you out. If you treat your staff badly it won’t stay a secret for long: platforms like glassdoor.com allow anyone who signs up to read the anonymous postings of employees from every type of business imaginable.

Now more than ever a ‘brand is what a brand does’: the business and the brand are inseparable. This has made the internal culture of a business critically important. No system in the world can compensate for poor or disgruntled employees; good service comes from a desire and willingness to do the best for the customer. Almost every celebrated service brand has invested heavily in its internal culture. Southwest airlines, Virgin Trains, Metro Bank and First Direct all know that the way to get remarkable service is to create a fantastic culture. It is possible to quantify this too. The Service-Profit Chain has long demonstrated a proven link between a great culture, a great service and profitable, highly satisfied customers. First proposed as a theory of business management in a 1994 article in the Harvard Business Review by James L Heskett, Thomas Jones, Gary Loveman, W Earl Sasser and Leonard Schlesinger, it was later the subject of a book by Heskett, Sasser and Schlesinger and is now a highly influential concept in business. The link it establishes has profound implications for any CEO looking to build a successful and respected business.

This requirement isn’t just about empowering frontline staff. Giving all employees a clear sense of the purpose and motivation that sit behind the business is a key part of developing a high-performing organization.

Structure matters

Organizational structure matters too because it has the potential to frustrate attempts at building seamless and frictionless customer interactions. Businesses can no longer comprise a series of individual departments; they need to get better at corralling multidisciplinary teams to serve the needs of the customer. Data and insight can’t be allowed to languish with the analytics team. Customer service can’t be held back by poor systems. Staff can’t fail to take the initiative because they are waiting for approval. Sales can’t be allowed to frustrate a loyal customer because they failed to recognize them when they logged in. Digitally native businesses start with an advantage but this can be squandered through poor management or leadership. Established businesses, by contrast, have to break down silos and inertia and learn to operate with purpose and pace.

A brand belongs to the customer

For businesses of all types, future success will depend on their ability to organize around the customer, to accept that reputation is earned and not cynically manipulated, to move from a tendency to command and control towards a more open and flexible way of working. To understand that while trademarks and IP can be legally owned by a business or individual, the real power of brands is that they reside in the mind of the customer and that every single action taken on behalf of a customer has the potential to add value and equity.

That is why a brand is not ‘owned’ by the marketing department.

A brand is what a brand does

Structure matters

A brand belongs to the customer

Further reading