How to Answer Amazon Leadership

Principle "Customer Obsession" Interview

Questions
 Published on December 5, 2017

Jennifer Scupi

Interview Coach
49 articles

If you're about to interview at Amazon you should already know the 14 Leadership Principles.

The first principle is "Customer Obsession"

I recommend that everyone, no matter what role they're interviewing for, prepare answers for the
customer obsession questions. This is really and truly Amazonians' favorite principle, so you
need to be able to show you live it.

You may not be in a customer-facing role like sales, but you still work for the person who clicks
"buy" — every decision Amazon makes is made thinking about how the end customer — the
person tapping the buy button — will receive it.

Amazon Leadership Principle #1: Customer Obsession

This is how Amazon explains the principle:

Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and
keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over
customers.

So what does this principle mean? It means customers are #1. 

Here is another way of understanding it. If you are obsessed with customers, you will:

 Know your customer’s needs and wants

 Collect data on what your customer wants and needs
 Ask, “Is what I’m working on helping my customers"?
 Sincerely pursue customer feedback
 "WOW” your customers
 Know what would be better than what your customer is imagining and give them that
 Remove steps in your process that don't add value

How to answer "customer obsession" questions in Amazon

interviews
I've explained what the principle is about, so now how will this principle show up in your
interview? Are they going to ask, "Are you obsessed with customers?" Well, they might ask this
exact question, but the questions aren't usually so clear. There are various ways you might get
asked about this.

Example interview questions asking about your customer

obsession
 Tell me about a time you handled a difficult customer. What did you do? How did you
manage the customer? What was her/his reaction? What was the outcome?
 Most of us at one time have felt frustrated or impatient when dealing with customers. Can
you tell me about a time when you felt this way and how you dealt with it?
 When do you think it’s ok to push back or say no to an unreasonable customer request?
 How do you develop client relationships?
 Tell me about a time you used customer feedback to change the way you worked.
 Tell me about a time you had to compromise in order to satisfy a customer.
 How do you get an understanding of what the customer’s needs are?
 How do you anticipate your customer’s needs?
 How do you honestly pursue customer feedback, not just solicit them for compliments?
 How do you wow your customers?
 Tell me about a time a customer wanted one thing, but you felt they needed something
else.
 When was a time when you had to balance the needs of the customer with the needs of
the business? 

Tip: These questions don't use the words "customer obsession" but they're asking you
whether you're obsessed with customers even without those words.

Tip: No, you don't need to use the words "obsessed" or "obsession" in your answer.
Answer the questions using behavioral question answering
techniques
These questions are called behavioral questions. Do you know what behavioral interview
questions are?

They're the type of questions that start with something like, "Give me an example of..." or "Tell
me about a time...." Even the questions that start off with "How do you..." are asking you about
your past behavior, so they are "behavioral" questions.

Use stories to answer behavioral questions

All of these questions that I listed need to be answered with a story about a time in your past
work experience.

Even if you get asked "How do you wow your customers?" — which seems like it wants a
general answer like "I work really hard" or something like that — they are actually asking for a
story about something specific. You should answer this question with something like, "I try to go
above and beyond to serve my customers [general statement about your habits]. For example,
once last year I had to..." [story about specific, real event]

In other words, you can give a short, general statement that describes your personality or work
habits but that isn't enough; you need to also give a specific example that shows your skills.

Use the STAR technique to structure your stories

So you have a good story to tell. Now how exactly do you tell it so that it's clear and not too
short or too long?

Use the STAR technique. 

The STAR technique is a common system used to answer behavioral interview questions. It

provides a structure for you to remember so that you include the correct data in your answers. 

These are the 4 steps of STAR:

S – Situation - background info

T – Task - what you had to do 

A – Activity - what you did - this should be the longest part of the answer

R – Result - positive; quantifiable; what you learned; what you would do differently next time
If you get asked a behavioral question, answer by going through the letters in order.

First give the S part (explain the basic situation). Then give the T (what was your job/task in this
situation) .Then A (show what you did). Last, give the R (outcome).

This is the basic STAR method. Here is more about STAR, including sample answers to some
possible questions, if you feel like you need more information before you start using it. 

Sample answers for customer obsession questions

Question: Tell me about a time you handled a difficult
customer.
This is the answer given by a salesperson:

"When I was a Sales Manager at X we had a group of unhappy customers. We'd sold them a
weed killer that hadn't worked well. As farmers, this was important to them and they were
threatening to take their business to our competitor. I had to try to keep them as customers. I
knew this would be hard because our product had been defective and had cost them money. I
had a meeting with all of them where I listened to them complain about what had happened. I
tried to listen to each of them and respond calmly. I explained to them what had happened,
which was definitely our fault, and apologized. In the end, they agreed to give us one more
chance  even though I couldn't offer them a refund (I didn't have the ability to do that.)"

Why is this answer good?

 It talks about skills that will be relevant in the job she is applying for — dealing with
unhappy clients, client communication, conflict management
 It follows the STAR structure so it's easy to follow
 It keeps to the details that are needed but doesn't add more — not too short or too long
 It references the Amazon principle "customer obsession" although you'll notice she
doesn't use those words 

Try to do the same things when answering your questions.

This is her answer broken down with STAR:

S:  When I was a Sales Manager at X we had a group of unhappy customers. We'd sold them a
weed killer that hadn't worked well. As farmers, this was important to them and they were
threatening to take their business to our competitor.

T: I had to try to keep them as customers. I knew this would be hard because our product had
been defective and had cost them money.
A:  I had a meeting with all of them where I listened to them complain about what had
happened. I tried to listen to each of them and respond calmly. I explained to them what had
happened, which was definitely our fault, and apologized.

R: In the end, they agreed to give us one more chance even though I couldn't offer them a refund
(I didn't have the ability to do that).

Length: Each section has only two to four sentences in it. The Action step can have more than
this, but the other sections should stick to this number. If you're using more sentences, your
answer is too long.

What happens if you talk for more than a minute? People stop listening.

Tip for salespeople: If you're a salesperson, cut your answer in half right now because it is too
long. I can tell you this without looking at it.

Tips for technical people: If you're a technical person like an IT person/Engineer/Data Analyst,
etc., look at your answer and remove at least half the detail you put into it and add general
statements that explain the overall concepts because you probably jumped into details without
explaining the situation adequately. Also, remember who you're talking to. A recruiter or HR
manager or someone in another department has no idea what the acronyms you're using mean so
don't use them. If you use one, like "I had to rewrite the X so that it would X" explain what those
things are. 

Tip: Don't say: "I let my boss handle it" or "I wasn't sure how to handle it" or "The
customer is always right so I gave them what they wanted." You need to show that you aren't
afraid of conflict (very important at Amazon), you know how to handle conflict in a way so that
customer isn't hurt, and that you also know how to handle conflict so that the company isn't hurt.
You need to show all of this and that you have good people skills (if you're in a customer-facing
role) and good communication skills (if you are in a non customer-facing role). 

Question: How do you get to an understanding of what the

customer’s needs are?
Tip: You might feel like you should answer by saying something like "I do customer research"
but remember they want a specific example of something that you did at work in the past and not
a general answer.

This is the answer given by a Senior Digital Product Manager:

"I use quantitative and qualitative approaches. Quantitative is looking at data to derive insights.
Data can be what are customers doing when they use your product and if you're using a digital
product you could use an approach like web analytics. Qualitative approaches you can simply
ask them about their needs about how they use your product, but a better way is to immerse
yourself into their problem space and ask where does the product fit into their daily life
today? For example, in looking at my top customers, in terms of the customers most engaged on
my platform, I can see that content about IT certification is very popular. As a result we started
doing online trainings and certifications. So instead of just a course or video, we do live
trainings now. Those turned out to be really popular. So it seems that anything we give them in
terms of IT certifcation is really popular. So I've started to talk to customers about the role of
certification in their workplace. It turns out that it's important because it's tied to promotions." 

This isn't a bad answer, but it isn't great. How could you make it better? Let's break it down into
S-T-A-R first. 

The first part is not actually the Situation, but rather what I call "general stuff" and "extra stuff
we don't need" — it's typical to see this at the start of answers — do you see how it isn't actually
"S" stuff? Look at it again:

"I use quantitative and qualitative approaches. Quantitative is looking at data to derive insights.
Data can be what are customers doing when they use your product and if you're using a digital
product you could use an approach like web analytics. Qualitative approaches you can simply
ask them about their needs about how they use your product, but a better way is to immerse
yourself into their problem space and ask where does the product fit into their daily life today?"

How could you use the same info but fix the structure? Move it around this way:

S — I use both quantitative and qualitative methods to find out what my customers need. [I kept
one sentence of the general stuff as a lead in.] For example, last month I wanted to find out what
type of content was most popular on our site so we could do more of it. 

T — I looked at data on my top customers, in terms of the customers most engaged on my
platform, and I could see that content about IT certification is very popular.  So I started to talk
to customers about the role of certification in their workplace. It turns out that it's important
because it's tied to promotions." 

A — As a result we started doing online trainings for the certifications. So instead of just a
course or video, we do live trainings now as part of the educational product line up.

R — Those turned out to be really popular. So it seems that anything we give them in terms of
IT certification is really popular.

This is a much clearer answer. It uses a specific example to explain how he finds out what his
customers want. 

These are the basics of answering customer obsession questions. If you have specific questions
for me you can put them in the comments or email me.
I offer several interview coaching packages, one of them tailored specifically to Amazon
candidates. If you’re looking for an Amazon interview coach, email me at
jennifer@interviewgenie.com to schedule a free 15 minute consultation or an interview coaching
session. I’m also happy to create a custom package that fits your needs. 

More articles about how to prepare for your Amazon interview:

General overview of how to answer leadership principle questions in an Amazon interview

How to use the STAR method to answer behavioral questions

How to answer Amazon behavioral interview questions