The Stickiness of Amazon Prime

Robert Cornish
Founder & CEO
March 8, 2023

I was talking to a friend about products and asked: do you have Amazon Prime? He said yes. I said, "do you plan to cancel it?" He said no.

In my view, Amazon Prime is one of the stickiest ecosystems I can think of.

I get a discount on WholeFoods, Amazon Music, Amazon Video, fast and free shipping, A free library on Kindle books, Audible free books, Amazon Kids+, and so on (here's a list)

And they keep adding to it.

Talking to my friend who's building a SaaS, we talked about the idea of overdelivering value well above costs to create the stickiest ecosystem possible.

Amazon Prime has done that. If you have it, I'd assume you're going to keep it.

When looking at any product or service, how can you make it sticky so the customers don't even think about leaving? How can you add value far above what they paid?

Looking at the customer journey, it would be a good idea to follow the experience from start to finish. Run through it yourself. What does it look like? Where does it break down? Where or how could it be better? Then, what value can you add to make it stickier?

Build a product or service and experience that customers don't want to change or leave or cancel.

Map out what it looks like now and fix anything that needs to be fixed including:

- the product or service

- the customer experience

- customer success connected to it  

″'Good intentions don't work, mechanisms do'” is a mantra from Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos

What can you take from Amazon Prime to improve the stickiness of your product?

At Richter, we internally obsess over creating a world-class customer experience and work constantly to make it better. That includes delivering stellar products. There are attributes connected to this goal that pushes us to constantly do better and by pursuing this, we create a stickier model.

We also consult clients on their customer experience journey to find ways to make it better, and stickier. Ultimately, you can have a great product, and great marketing but if the customer service, experience, and success doesn't add up -- you'll still end up with churn or attrition.

When I think about some of the greatest companies, products, or services -- I'm usually fiercely loyal to them and they tend to have built the stickiest business.

— Robert


About Robert Cornish: Robert Cornish founded Richter in early 2008 to build an agency focused on communication strategies that support sales growth for business-to-business technology-related companies. Bootstrapped with zero capital in the middle of the financial meltdown, Richter went on to make the Inc 5000 list comprised of the fastest-growing companies in America five times. Richter made the Silicon Valley Fast 50 four times and the Entrepreneur360 award two times. Robert has been featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, Selling Power Magazine, Inc Magazine and IDEA magazine. He's been a guest speaker for ACG Los Angeles, IASA Summit, West Point and been interviewed for 33Voices, EnTRUEpreneurship Podcast and IDEA Magazine by Northwood University. In 2012 Wiley & Sons published his book, What Works, about the lessons he's learned while growing his agency from start-up navigating his way to a multi-million dollar agency. Robert currently owns five companies.

Get What Works on Audible here >>> https://adbl.co/2BvqS4I

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