When passion meets profession: A story behind Amazon Operations

Here we are in conversation with Amazonian, Anil Kumar Abboju, part of Amazon India’s dedicated workforce who make sure that you receive your products on time, every single day.

Anil Kumar Abboju is a Channel Relationship Manager (CRM) with Amazon’s logistics division. He has worked with Amazon India for the past 6 years and is in charge of Amazon India’s innovative ‘I Have Space’ (IHS) programme and Delivery Service Partners (DSP) for Vijayawada, Warangal, Krishna, Godavari and Guntur districts.

“I started out with Amazon India as a team lead for the first delivery station in Hyderabad,” shares Anil, “I feel proud to have been a part of the pilot batch of Amazon Logistics, India”. He moved to Chennai after about a year to take up higher responsibilities of setting up delivery stations; and, thereafter, from June 2017 onwards, he took up a CRM role.

His current CRM responsibilities involve extensive visits and handholding of potential IHS operators and spread across remote locations. This is a challenging process of evaluating, training, handholding, recruiting DSP’s and IHS partners with basic skill levels. The desired outcome of the entire laborious exercise is, of course, the best customer experience. For this, Anil and his team go through a meticulous process to see that all standard operating procedures are met and physical proximity no longer remains an issue.

“It’s been more than 6 years with Amazon now. And it still feels like my first day at work. Amazon’s ‘Still Day-1’ culture has continued to be my inspiration throughout these years. The drive to constantly raise the bar and innovate at work still inspires me every day,” Anil admits.

After taking up the CRM role, he has been launching DSP stations in the region. “Once a new DSP or IHS partner is onboarded, the initial stages are always critical for us, where we need to coach them into our ways of working. Our visits to those locations are also significantly high in the beginning. Till the time they don’t meet our performance bar, we put in our best efforts in grooming them for delivering good customer experience,” shares Anil.

Anil and his team’s dedication and passionate involvement were rewarded when the Andhra Pradesh DSP stations topped as the best performers in 2018, across India. “In Amazon our performance metrics are the indicators of customer experience and satisfaction levels,” explains Anil.

Constantly mentoring to upskill talent from tier-III and IV locations to understand and deliver on customer experience is a challenge in itself. Physical challenges of basic infrastructure like badly maintained or non-existent rural roads and erratic power supply are some of the other challenges faced by Anil and his team . Multiple visits to these centres becomes more challenging till the time the performance bar is met by the partners.

Anil is justifiably proud of the result of his constant coaching and mentoring of his team. “We have constantly coached and developed our station supervisors in such a way that they have improved their talent, their ways of working and performances excellently,” says Anil.

This is exactly where Anil’s personal interests merge with his passion at the work place. “Listening to leadership talks inspires me to develop myself constantly and drives me to achieve greater heights,” he shares. His appetite for constant skilling and development has translated meaningfully into his career at Amazon.

Anil loves the human interaction that his work involves as well as the opportunity to mentor and develop his team. Visiting the various service stations under his charge, holding training and coaching sessions with them is increasingly what his work at Amazon has shaped up to become in recent years, and Anil loves it. Learnings from interactions with his colleagues and leaders at work is the second adrenalin shot that keeps this channel relationship ninja excited and raring to go.

“Apart from designing check lists and follow-up mechanisms for service stations, I love the fact that I can help my team grow in their careers. Supporting my team career-wise as well as helping them with their personality development is a privilege that I cherish. And it still feels like Day 1 at work,” smiles Anil.