Amanda Whiteside
Head of Customer Programs
Amazon Shipping
United Kingdom
Amanda has been voted one of five highly commended entrants to CX Leader of the Year 2021!
Having launched in 2017 with the vision to provide a shipping solution exclusive to companies selling on Amazon marketplace, Amazon Shipping hired Amanda Whiteside the following year, and she has subsequently established a global function focused entirely on the customer.
Initially, there was little meaningful data that shared insights related to customer feedback or sentiment so Amanda prioritised working with tech teams to create a beta widget within the company's internal tool, Shipper Central, that would request customer feedback. These basic customer insights coupled with customer contact trends, identified fundamental issues and gaps in its service and enabled Amanda to create a future state charter for how the company should define its customer, their needs and Amazon's strategy to serve them.
A CX vision was created and shared to the organisation, and a team with 12 senior programme managers built from the ground up. CX metrics are now ingrained into everything the company does (CSAT is a VP-level goal), with feedback touchpoints across each key customer-facing milestone and mechanisms to escalate and solve customer defects with SLAs and defined ownership across teams. The company prides itself on having deep insights on what matters to its customer and how to deliver it.
One of the most recent successes has been the creation of 'tiger teams' to drive better cross-functional collaboration. There are now five of these teams across key customer programmes/touchpoints, each leveraging insights from CSAT, contact trends plus operational data relative to their specific areas with the ultimate objective to improve customer experience. These teams are now the backbone of the business, connecting frequently in weekly/monthly syncs and presenting quarterly business reviews aimed at proving a retrospective performance update along with a list of all future looking CX initiatives.
Service quality measures have improved as a result of ongoing improvements to onboarding and the customer journey, with contacts per shipment dropping and CSAT soaring.
Our programme has since been borrowed by other Amazon organisations, where similar mechanisms and metrics have been adopted to track and drive the same CX obsession. My unique experience has taught me that whilst you can work in one of ‘the most customer obsessed businesses in the world’ unless you have the right structure, mechanisms and drive, you will not by default have a CX focused organisation.
As a highly commended entrant to 2021’s CX Leader of the Year Amanda's entry stood out among our judging panel:
“Amanda has overcome many obstacles to build best practice. She demonstrated the importance of engaging the entire organisation in change through influence, perseverance and admirable tenacity and grit.”
- Diane Magers, CX Leader of the Year judge
