Amazon CEO Andy Jassy just joined the company's earnings call for the first time ever and shared 4 of his top priorities: 'Each era is different'

• Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy made his first ever appearance on the company's quarterly earnings call.
• Jassy shared the four areas he's most focused on now.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy made his first ever appearance on the company's earnings call on Thursday and shared the 4 areas he's most focused on.

Unlike most other companies, Amazon's earnings calls are led by its CFO Brian Olsavsky. Amazon founder and ex-CEO Jeff Bezos didn't join the call for years before stepping down in 2021. Jassy said he'll jump on the call "from time to time moving forward" on Thursday.

Jassy's unexpected appearance highlights the pressure he's facing as CEO. The company's stock plunged last year, bureaucracy has crept in steadily, and the company is laying off 18,000 employees. Early this year, there was even chatter internally about Bezos potentially returning to the helm as CEO.

During the call, Jassy said Amazon's priorities shift based on "what's happening around" the company and that his focus areas may be different from prior leaders like Bezos. Those external factors include the pandemic, labor shortages, and an uncertain economy, just to name a few, according to Jassy.

"For any leadership team, each era is different, and it's often meaningfully impacted by what's happening around you," Jassy said.

Here are the 4 focus areas for Amazon, according to Jassy:

• Efficiency: Amazon expanded significantly during the pandemic, doubling its fulfillment center footprint in a couple of years. It also built out a transportation network "roughly the size of UPS" in that same period, Jassy said. That means Amazon has a lot to figure out on how to optimize costs and how to make more efficient decisions. "To figure out how to be really efficient across all those links and have them be highly utilized and to get the flows in those facilities work in the right way, it takes time. So we're working very hard on it," Jassy said.
• Speed and selection: Jassy said getting products to customers faster makes them happier, and that leads to higher conversion rates. And when there's more product selection that is delivered quickly, it only leads to high customer satisfaction.
• Pricing: In the current economy, customers are "very conscious" about how much they're spending, Jassy said, which makes pricing an even more important factor for them. Amazon has run a number of different deals and promotions recently to help alleviate some of those concerns. "We'll continue to work really hard on being sharp on pricing," Jassy said.
• Customer experience: Jassy said "being maniacally focused on the customer experience" will always be a top priority. He listed a number of new services Amazon launched in recent years, including the Buy with Prime feature that lets Prime members get free shipping on non-Amazon sites, and the new RxPass prescription delivery service. "We will continue to work very hard on those customer experiences, and we have a lot more planned," Jassy said.

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