I have an Organization Design list of forty items on Amazon's Listmania. I then tried to add another item but apparently each list only takes forty items. So I have an Organization Design List Two with that item on which looks very strange as one item does not, in my view, qualify as a list. So now I need to spend some time adding more items to list two. (Or deleting it – which is probably the better option in terms of choices around time investment at this stage).
Additionally I have a profile page as a non-author – where my lists and wish list sit, plus I also have an author page which has a lot more information. It seems that it is not possible to link the two and have a single page for a single individual. I may be missing something on this and it may be possible, but as things stand I have emailed Amazon through their 'contact us' point to find out a) if I can make a list private while I'm working on it and b) if I can just have one author page and no other profile page so all my information is in one place.
I'm interested to see what the response is (and if I get one at all). The organization of the site as it currently is does not give me the type of 'customer experience' that I would like. But that may for various behind-the-scenes reasons which, at the moment an Amazon organization design person is grappling with (along with the IT department or similar).
Back to Organization Design List One (forty items) and thinking about my own customers I see that I have not put any comments against any one of the items, so no-one is getting my view on how the book is useful or why I included it on the list. I did choose the books from the hundreds available, but I now think that I need to give more information to make the list of any value.
Differently, on my wish list (also public) there is no space to annotate/comment about it which, in my view would be useful. I could add in notes like 'read the review in the NY Times to remind myself of why I wanted to read it. Would this be helpful to readers of the list as they look at it? Or is the wish list public to encourage people to buy and send me the books on it that I am wishing for? Looking at the wish list I see that a lot of the books are on organization culture (enough to compile a forty item list) – so I'm now wondering if I should compile one of those, and annotate it in order for it to be the 'really useful' list.
These kinds of thoughts on customer service and/or experience are helpful in reminding me that it's a continuous process of development. In this instance Amazon points out that the author pages are new, and also that the Listmania compilation process is new – so as they advance their offerings I can (have to?) advance mine.
Naomi Stanford 