What Is Fantastic Customer Service on Amazon?

But what exactly is fantastic customer service on Amazon?

What practical things should you be doing to keep your customers satisfied?

And perhaps more importantly (or selfishly!), what’s in it for you?

Here are 4 ways that incredible customer service manifests itself on Amazon:

1. Item as described

At the end of the day, the most important thing to the customer is that they receive the item they bought, and it’s exactly how it was described. This may sound obvious, but how many times have you bought something from a regular store, only to take it home, open the box and discover that a part is missing or the item is not what you thought.

Double the frustration when it’s something you bought online and waited for patiently. Sending your customer a very similar color or almost the right style to the one they requested is simply not good enough.

Take care to send them the correct item, in the described condition, and you’re 90% of the way to achieving complete customer satisfaction.
What’s in it for you:

By delivering the item as promised, you’re helping yourself considerably to achieving a perfect order. A perfect order is one that (in Amazon’s words) is accepted, processed and fulfilled without incident. The more perfect orders you have, the more points Amazon will award you and the more points you are awarded, the higher your chances of swinging the Buy Box in your favor.

2. Fast shipping times

Part of the reason the customer bought the product from you is because you promised to ship it to them within a specific amount of time. Paul, in our R&D team, bought a birthday card for his girlfriend’s birthday so needs it to arrive on time. Kate, in our office, is going on holiday next month and needs that travel guide. One of our sales guys, Max, just really wants his new phone already! Whatever the reason, if you promise to send your customer something by a certain time, and you fulfill that promise, you’ll be making that customer extremely happy.

What’s in it for you:

Shipping time has a massive impact on the Buy Box. For example, to ship an item within 0-2 days will do you far better off than shipping it within 3-7 days. The faster you say you’ll ship something, the more impressive it is to Amazon and the more likely you are to win the Buy Box.

Fast response times

One of the major differences between selling online and selling in an actual store is that a store involves real people. And real people means face to face customer service.

Since interaction in the eCommerce sphere is limited to email, your written communication with a customer is crucial. Responding promptly to their messages shows them that you are concerned about what’s bothering them and that you’ll do your best to solve their issue.

What’s in it for you:

A swift response impacts your Customer Response Time rating, which plays no small part in determining Buy Box share. For example, if over 10% of messages were only replied to after 24 hours (or never replied to), your chances of winning the Buy Box severely decrease. On the flip side, if you consistently respond within the first 12 hours of customer messages, your rating will shoot up and you stand a much stronger chance of winning the Buy Box.

Being polite and helpful

In addition to responding quickly, you also need to be courteous and helpful to your customers. This is especially crucial since your communication is email-based.

If you were talking to a customer, your tone and intonation would make a difference, but with written communication, it’s purely the words that count.

What’s in it for you:

If you’re nice, the customer will hopefully leave you positive feedback, which has a relatively large impact on the Buy Box. Since leaving feedback is not a requirement on Amazon and only about 10-20% of buyers typically leave feedback, you want to do everything you can to encourage them to comment about you.

The above is an image of a typical feedback form a buyer completes. As you can see, they answer the question of whether or not you provided them with prompt and courteous service. They’ll also give you a star rating out of five, based on their overall impression of your service.

So there you have it.

Each of these things is pretty simple.

None are particularly surprising.

All are what the customer expects from you.

And you won’t do too badly out of them, either!

This is the second of a five part-series on The Customer Service Guide for FBM Sellers.