Customer Service Tools and Tips For eBay Sellers - Feb 26 in Community Help Boards in Community

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Last Post Feb 26, 2007 2:04 PM by: deirdre@ebay.com

Replies: 16

Customer Service Tools and Tips For eBay Sellers - Feb 26

Jan 31, 2007 7:13 PM

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Topic: eBay Workshop: Customer Service Tools and Tips For eBay Sellers

Host: eBay Staff
Date: Monday 02/26
Time: 1:00 am to 2:00 am PT
Location: Workshop Board

Description: Providing great customer service for your buyers is a great way to differentiate yourself as an eBay seller. Come learn how to manage buyer questions more easily with our new Customized Question Subjects feature, existing eBay tools such as our Frequently Asked Questions and Selling Manager Pro Automation, and best practices to streamline your business and convert one time buyers into repeat customers!

Cheers,

Deirdre
eBay Community Development

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Customer Service Tools and Tips For eBay Sellers - Feb 26

Feb 26, 2007 11:25 AM

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Welcome to the Customer Service Tools and Tips workshop.

Thanks for joining us here today at our workshop “Customer Service Tools and Tips for eBay Sellers”. My name is Albert, and I am a product manager here at eBay focused on helping eBay sellers better manage customer service with eBay buyers.

If you’re looking to increase repeat sales, improve your productivity, and differentiate yourself as a seller, this workshop is for you!

We will spend the next hour here with you sharing some information about a few tips and tools based on feedback from successful sellers like yourself. We’ll also have time for questions and answers.

**

Customer Service Tools and Tips For eBay Sellers - Feb 26

Feb 26, 2007 11:25 AM

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I. First of all, why is good customer service important?

A.) Acquiring new customers is 5 times more expensive than retaining past buyers.

B.) According to a recent survey of top eBay sellers, good customer service is the #1 driver of repeat buyer activity

C.) Streamlining your customer service processes is an opportunity to reduce your operating costs and increase margins

Customer Service Tools and Tips For eBay Sellers - Feb 26

Feb 26, 2007 11:26 AM

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II. Secondly, what are some concepts or ways to view your interactions with buyers?

A.) Think like a buyer.

Think about questions that you might ask if you were a buyer in their shoes
Make sure that your listings and descriptions are filled with enough information to answer questions, but not too much to be overwhelming to your potential buyers.

For example common questions include the following: more detailed pictures, shipping details, payment instructions & methods, and product specific questions.

Customer Service Tools and Tips For eBay Sellers - Feb 26

Feb 26, 2007 11:26 AM

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B.) View every interaction with an eBay user as a chance to convert them to buyers

For example courteous replies, proper grammar, an email signature, and thanking the buyer for their purchases may appear to be small things, but they are powerful ways to reinforce your position as professional, and customer focused seller. A few small positive interactions will help build good will for future purchases with buyers.

C.) Set Clear Buyer Expectations

As it is often said, half of success is determined by the expectations you set. Similarly, in your interactions with eBay buyers, being up front with your customer service policies will help set expectations.

For example, if you only have one customer service representative or do not answer questions on weekends, noting that in your item description or in your Frequently Asked Questions will alert buyers as to when they should expect to hear a response.

Customer Service Tools and Tips For eBay Sellers - Feb 26

Feb 26, 2007 11:28 AM

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III. Tools

A.) Manage incoming questions with the New Customized Subject Feature

Sellers can now create up to 9 additional customized subjects for buyers to choose from when asking you a question about your eBay listing. Now, you can more easily categorize and sort the types of questions your buyers are asking.
For example, if you offer a Return Policy and want to easily identify questions about it, you could create a "Return Policy Question" subject that buyers could select.
Outside of this customized subject line, the email sellers receive will look exactly the same as it does today. If a seller decides not to create any custom subjects, buyers will see the same default choices they do today.

If you would like to create your own Customized Subjects follow these steps:

1. Go to Ask Seller a Question in My eBay Preferences and click on the “Edit” link next to “Customize the question types that buyers can choose from”

Link

Here is what the page looks like:

Seller Preferences

Seller Preferences

Customer Service Tools and Tips For eBay Sellers - Feb 26

Feb 26, 2007 11:28 AM

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2. Customize the Questions that you would like buyers to see on the “Customize Questions” page.

Image hosted by EbayImage.com

Image hosted by EbayImage.com

3. Click Submit when you are finished!

4. Below are the Customized Question types that buyers will see when they go to Ask you a Question

Image hosted by EbayImage.com

Image hosted by EbayImage.com

Customer Service Tools and Tips For eBay Sellers - Feb 26

Feb 26, 2007 11:29 AM

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Deflect Buyer Questions with eBay’s Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) Product

With eBay’s FAQ feature, we give sellers the opportunity to display extra information to buyers on the Ask Seller a Question page. Buyers will see one or more of the following based on the seller’s preference:

• Seller Specific Frequently Asked Questions
• Item Specifics on the individual item
• Questions and Answers posted on that listing

Sellers can also add the Frequently Asked Question as a Custom Page in their Store.
This feature will enable you as sellers to proactively answer buyer’s more common questions which in turn will give you more time to answer the more specific questions!

If you would like to create your own custom Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), follow these steps:

5. Go to Ask Seller a Question in My eBay Preferences. Link

ASQ Preferences

ASQ Preferences

6. Select the options you want to display on the Ask Seller a Question page.

7. Enter your questions and answers. You can preview your FAQs before showing them to buyers.

8. Click Submit when you are finished!

Customer Service Tools and Tips For eBay Sellers - Feb 26

Feb 26, 2007 11:30 AM

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Where will this feature be displayed?
This new feature will be displayed in two places.

1st on the Ask Seller a Question Page here:
ASQ Page

ASQ Page

And if you are an eBay Storeowner, you can select the frequently asked questions as a custom page as well!

Selecting Frequently Asked Questions as a Custom Page in Your Store

If you currently have an eBay store, you can select the FAQs that you have created as a custom template. Simply go to Custom Pages within Manage My store, and select Frequently Asked Questions as your template.

ASQ custom page

ASQ custom page

You can access Stores Custom pages here:
Link

Follow the normal Custom page Setup, and you’re set!
If you would like to know more about answering buyer’s questions, go here:

Link

Customer Service Tools and Tips For eBay Sellers - Feb 26

Feb 26, 2007 11:30 AM

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C.) Improve Customer Service Productivity: Keep a list of your common questions and answers in an electronic file

Having an electronic file allows you or your customer service representatives to quickly copy and paste responses to common buyer questions. However, please be sure to personalize the “to” and “from” fields to add that special touch to your customers’ responses.

Customer Service Tools and Tips For eBay Sellers - Feb 26

Feb 26, 2007 11:31 AM

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D.) Proactively address buyer questions with Selling Manager Pro’s Automated Post Auction Emails

eBay’s Selling Manager Pro product helps eBay sellers save time by automating post responses to your buyers – reducing questions before buyers attempt to ask. For example, you can choose from 7 fully customizable templates that are triggered based on buyer activities: Winning buyer notification, payment reminder, payment received, request for shipping address, feedback reminder, shipping notification

Customer Service Tools and Tips For eBay Sellers - Feb 26

Feb 26, 2007 11:31 AM

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E. Leverage Third Party Products & Certified Providers

3rd party tools and eBay Certified Providers such as Microsoft Outlook, Hosted Support, Vendio, mPire, provide products that help manage customer service with your eBay buyers more efficiently.

For example, within Microsoft Outlook you can create rules based on email subject headers and filter to the appropriate bucket. For example, some sellers route all questions with the word “Shipping” in the subject title to a specific folder where their shipping expert can address those questions.

Hosted Support allows you to create rules to send back automated responses to buyers based on keywords embedded in the body of the email.

Also, Vendio’s Sales Manager sends automatic post auction responses back to buyers and even has an automated thank you tool that recently launched.

Please feel free to visit solutions.eBay.com for more information on other tools to help improve your business.

Customer Service Tools and Tips For eBay Sellers - Feb 26

Feb 26, 2007 11:32 AM

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F. In closing, we hope that you’ve picked up a few tips and tricks that will help you differentiate you as a seller, drive additional repeat activity, and streamline your eBay Business. Thanks again for joining us and have a great day!

Customer Service Tools and Tips For eBay Sellers - Feb 26

Feb 26, 2007 11:35 AM

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Hi everyone:

We've posted the workshop material in advance to allow you to read through it prior to the workshop.

We'll be back at 1:00 p.m. Pacific time to answer your questions.

Thanks,

Deirdre
eBay Community Development

Customer Service Tools and Tips For eBay Sellers - Feb 26

Feb 26, 2007 1:01 PM

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Welcome and thanks for joining us today!

We love workshops to be interactive, so please feel free to ask your questions that directly relate to this topic.

Added note: If you click on the "Watch this discussion" link, you will receive an email each time someone posts to the workshop.

Stop Watching: If at any time you no longer want to receive updates on a thread you are watching, just click on the link titled "Stop Watching Thread" found in the specific thread being watched. Also you can remove any watched thread by clicking on the "Watched Discussions" link located in the log in bar and deleting the watched thread.

If you're new to the discussion boards, please be sure to check out the board tutorial:

Link

Cheers,

Deirdre
eBay Community Development

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