Clearly it’s worth looking into given the success, the dominance and now the longevity of the Amazon story. 

‘The Everything Store’, which traces Amazon’s rise, was named Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year for 2013. Partly, in the words of one judge, because of its management lessons.

4 lessons to be precise and you can find them here –http://blogs.ft.com/businessblog/2013/11/four-management-lessons-from-amazon/?

Lesson 1 and 4 have the greatest resonance with accountants it seems to me:

Lesson 1: Look after the customer!

Yes this lesson is stating the blatantly obvious but the book suggests a commitment level to customer care rarely seen in an accountancy firm. Maybe your firm is committed like Amazon is – if so please comment on what little things you do prove you are?

Hook this customer focus to lesson 4 in the book and you have a simple but powerful focus for your firm in 2014.

Lesson 4: Reinforce a virtuous circle of advantages.

Bezos’s comment, quoted at the end of the book could be applied to accountancy firms: “We don’t have a single big advantage” he says. As an accountancy firm you ‘do’ the same stuff for your customers as your competitors do. Here’s Bezos’s solution: “So we have to weave a rope of many small advantages.”

Bezos is suggesting there is no one single magic ticket solution to winning the long game (Lesson 3 – focus long term). There’s lots of small steps, done often and done very well.

So if your firm is regularly, habitually improving the way you serve your customers then you’ll be deserving of some of the success Amazon has achieved.

What’s your weekly or monthly process for improving your firm’s customer care?

How do you systematically/habitually improve the way you deliver on your customers’ experience of your firm?

Paul Shrimpling
Remarkable Practice

Creator of ‘Business Bitesize’ – cultivating a greater flow of new clients for your accountancy firm through profitable word-of-mouth –https://remarkablepractice.com/businessbitesize

Author of ‘Bamboo Marketing For Accountants’ – the route map to marketing success for accountants in practice – http://www.bamboomarketingforaccountants.com/