Get Hands-On Experience With Frontline And Customers

In addition to data and structured methods, immersive, first-hand experiences and direct customer research gave us some of the most impactful input metrics and ideas at Amazon. These approaches helped ground our innovation efforts in real customer needs and operational realities.

Key Takeaways:

• We gained critical insight from frontline experience: During Amazon’s early years, leadership—including Jeff Bezos—regularly worked in fulfillment centers and answered customer service calls during peak seasons. These visceral experiences helped us better understand operational pain points and identify new input metrics.
• We institutionalized hands-on learning: The value was so great that we made it a requirement—every Amazon employee spends time in frontline roles each year. This creates empathy, sharpens customer focus, and surfaces measurable opportunities for improvement.
• We used customer research to drive innovation: Surveys, focus groups, and third-party data sources gave us clear, actionable feedback. A simple survey on why customers didn’t shop more often revealed four key barriers—shipping cost, delivery speed, selection, and price—which directly shaped the creation of Amazon Prime and our long-term priorities.
• We traced key customer complaints back to inputs: From that early research, we began measuring and improving core inputs like in-stock rate, selection breadth, delivery speed, and pricing—cementing them in our flywheel as long-term business drivers.
• We leveraged sales and customer interactions in B2B contexts: Especially in business-to-business scenarios, we worked closely with sales teams and met customers in person to gather input-rich feedback, helping us refine offerings and discover metrics specific to client pain points.

Together, these methods reinforce the importance of direct, empathetic engagement with customers and operations—not just to build understanding, but to generate input metrics that we can track, improve, and build entire services around.

To dive deeper into Input Metrics Mastery and learn more from Bill and Colin, follow these links:

• Take the full course at their website: https://workingbackwards.com/
• Buy the book: https://www.amazon.com/Working-Backwards-Insights-Stories-Secrets/dp/1250267595
• Bill's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-carr/
• Colin's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinbryar/