The name speaks for itself: Amazon is famous for disrupting established industries with technological innovations at a mass scale. It’s the world's largest e-commerce marketplace, AI assistant provider, and cloud computing platform — and the largest Internet company, by revenue, in the world.
Their market conditions
Although they are dominant, Amazon aims to continually disrupt the market, delivering innovative solutions that exceed customer expectations. CEO Jeff Bezos believes you should start with the customer and work backwards to create a superior customer experience.
They supported this vision by growing one of the world’s largest UX teams. This in-house team has amazing skills and experience, but still look to external firms, such as The UX Agency, for inspiration and support.
Improving the Amazon Alexa experience
The Amazon Alexa UX team asked us to help improve the Alexa messaging experience. We conducted ‘Wizard of Oz’-style research, where an experimenter (the “wizard”), in a laboratory setting, simulates a theoretical intelligent computer application.
We supported and guided Amazon’s Senior UX Researchers throughout the project, handled all recruitment and provided labs to conduct the research, helping to reduce the burden on the internal team. We analysed the results so the team could get rapid feedback.
Reinvigorating online supermarkets
The Amazon Fresh team asked how they could improve the online supermarket experience, so they could exceed the service offered by competitors. This meant analysing the end-to-end customer experience at Amazon Fresh compared to their competition.
Our multi-method approach involved ethnography, in-depth interviews and quantitative research. This gave us deep insights into every stage of the customer journey, from product selection through to the order delivery experience. Using customers across a range of supermarkets let us identify opportunities that would transform the Amazon Fresh experience.
We were shadowed by new members of the Amazon UX team, helping them to learn from the experience. We mentored the team, giving them opportunities to conduct the research, and provided support and feedback to help them develop.
How our approach helped Amazon
We provide an extension to the UX team at Amazon, so they have a team of experienced UX researchers to call on for support and guidance. If they have issues with their team’s bandwidth, they can use us as an additional resource for projects.
We continue to work with Amazon globally as a preferred supplier, helping them disrupt the market and deliver leading solutions.
