Archive for the 'eBay Auctions' Category
Anyone hoping to make money selling goods on eBay should be aware of the eBay quality of service ranking system. Sellers are rated through feedback from customers who have bought goods from them previously.
There are thousands of sellers competing on eBay and potential customers will naturally gravitate towards the sellers who have a positive feedback rating. Developing a good customer service policy and maintaining it in all your eBay dealings is vital to your success.
The first thing to do before you plan your customer service strategies for selling goods on eBay is to read the rules. The regulations and policies that govern eBay transactions are clearly set out on the eBay website.
There are a lot of them but it is worth spending time to get acquainted with any rules that will apply to your eBay sales. Once you have a fair grasp of the rules, you can develop your own customer service policy.
Your customer service strategies for eBay sales should start with product description: eBay is not the place for advertising puff or hype of any description. A clear photo of the item for sale is a great aid. You must be completely honest and accurate when describing items for sale. If applicable, include the manufacturer’s name and model identification number.
The provision of a full description is doubly important when you are selling used goods. If an item has a flaw, describe it fully. For instance: if you are selling an article that has sustained a minor scratch, don’t describe the damage in words such as “minute” or “insignificant”. State the exact position and dimensions of the mark.
Your customers will not receive goods below their expectation and, if the merchandise exceeds what was expected, the customers will be satisfied and give you postive feedback. If you try to play down the extent of any defects when describing items for sale, people will not trust you enough to make a purchase; if the goods are sold, you are more likely to receive complaints, requests for refunds and negative feedback.
You must keep up your eBay customer service strategies during the time people are bidding in the auction. Prospective buyers often want more information than you have provided in your description of articles on sale.
If a potential customer contacts you to ask for further details of goods you are selling, make sure you reply without delay and give clear answers to any questions. An enquiry that seems immaterial to you might be the one factor that persuades a purchaser to buy from you rather than a competitor offering an almost identical article.
Maintain your good customer service levels through to delivery of the items you have sold. This means despatching the items as soon as possible (this should be the same day unless it is a weekend or public holiday). To ensure a high level of customer satisfaction, make sure you never ask for an inflated sum to cover postage and packaging.
Your customers will know how much the postage and packaging materials cost you and they won’t mind being asked a fair price to cover those expenses. It is not unusual for the cost of postage to exceed the price of the goods and people don’t mind this because they still feel they are getting a bargain. One thing nobody likes is the feeling that someone is trying to rip him/her off and that is the impression you will convey if you ask an excessive amount for postage.
Customer service policy on eBay should be no different from good customer service in any online transaction. The key is to maintain honesty, provide fast service and make it clear you have nothing to hide.
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eBay Description Writing Tips.
Once you’ve drawn the buyers in with your title, the next thing to do is to tell them all about your item with the description. But just what should you write in your description?
At its heart, your item description is an ad. Without making it too obvious, you should be writing sales copy. You’re trying to get buyers excited about your products, and that’s usually hard - but on eBay, if you have the right thing to sell and give enough details, the buyers almost excite themselves.
Technical Details.
Include every technical detail you know, including the item’s manufacturer, its condition, how big it is, where and when it was made, its history, and anything else special about it. Don’t be too boring, though: the best descriptions are written in friendly, conversational language, and show a real knowledge of the item. Whatever you do, make sure you tell the truth!
Remember that most of the people who’ll be buying your item will be just as knowledgeable about it as you are, if not more - this is their hobby, and they’re experts. Don’t feel like you need to explain the basics of the item: just go into as much technical detail as you can. As a rule, don’t write anything in the description if you don’t know what it means, as the chances are someone will, and if you’ve got it slightly wrong then you’ll look like you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Interesting Details.
You might find that you enjoy writing a few things about how you got the item, why you’re selling it, and who you think might like it. This isn’t strictly necessary, but it gives your auctions some character and a personal touch, and can make people more likely to trust you. People might wonder what you’re doing selling 500 CDs all at once, and if you tell them the reason, then they’ll feel reassured that nothing dodgy is going on. If you’re selling them because you’re having a baby and you need the space, just say so.
Write as Much as You Can.
Leave nothing out of your description, even if that seems to you like it makes it cumbersomely long. There is no way you can be too thorough: someone, somewhere will appreciate that you took the time to write the extra information.
Don’t assume that anyone who wants extra information will email you to ask a question: many buyers are shy and won’t do it. Think of questions that buyers might have and add the answers to your description, as people generally tend to ask the same questions over and over again.
Each time a buyer does email you with a question, you should both answer their question and update your description so that it will include the answer next time. If people ask questions that are answered in the description, try putting these parts of the auction on a line alone, or in bold, to make them easier to notice.
Is the eBay Customer Always Right?
I can answer this question for you right now: the answer is ‘yes’. In fact, the answer is ‘YES!’ - the biggest yes you’ve ever heard. Of the course the customer is always right. If you want to be a successful eBay seller, you should go miles out of your way to make sure every single one of your customers is 100% satisfied, however much time or money it might cost you.
A dissatisfied customer will leave negative feedback, and negative feedback is to be avoided at all costs. That one piece of negative feedback will always cost you more than it would have to deal with the complaint, whatever the value of the items you sell. You should consider any positive feedback percentage under 100% to be an absolute disaster, and a personal failure on your part.
But What If…
But nothing! There is no situation where you, as a seller, should get into any dispute with a buyer. Here are a few common situations and how to handle them.
They say the item never arrived: Politely ask the buyer to wait a few more days to see if it turns up, and then email you again if it still hasn’t arrived. If it still hasn’t arrived, you should assume it was lost in the post somehow and offer to send a replacement if you have one, or give them a full refund otherwise. No, I don’t care what that costs you. Are you serious about selling on eBay or not?
The item has been damaged in the post: You must offer to replace it or take it back for a refund without hesitation.
They say the item doesn’t match the description: Resist the urge to email back with “yes it does, you just didn’t read the description properly”. Take the item back for a refund, and edit your description if you need to, to make any confusing points extra clear.
I’m sure you’re spotting a pattern by now. Offering a refund will make almost any problem go away, and it really will cost you less in the long run. Remember, one piece of negative feedback will stay with you forever, while having a 100% positive rating is like owning a bar of solid gold.
You should always handle customers’ complaints before they complain to eBay - in fact, you should email them pre-emptively to ask if they have any. Going through the dispute process is time consuming, reflects badly on you and is downright unnecessary.
Are you still not convinced? Think this would only work with cheap items? Well, you see, the higher the price of the items you sell, the more your reputation is worth to you. Let’s say you were selling $10,000 worth of items each week, for example, and making a $1,000 profit per week overall. You might think that refunding one customer’s $1,000 purchase would be a tragedy, losing you your whole week’s profit. It’s far better to look at it this way: if you don’t give that refund, then not only will you lose the next week’s profit, but you’ll probably lose a few weeks’ profit after that too. Now which option looks better?
I absolutely can’t emphasise enough the importance of really believing that the customer is always right. But trying to make excuses for complaints isn’t the only thing you need to avoid. There are a lot of pitfalls that you need to avoid if you don’t want to kill your business before it’s even started properly - and I’ll show you in the next email what they are.
What’s Your eBay Reputation Really Worth?
Your eBay reputation is everything you are on eBay - without it, you’re nothing. Your reputation is worth as much as every sale you will ever make.
If you’ve ever bought anything on eBay (and the chances are you have), then think about your own behaviour. Buying from a seller with a low feedback rating makes you feel a little nervous and insecure, while buying from a PowerSeller with their reputation in the thousands doesn’t require any thought or fear - it feels just like buying from a shop.
A Bad Reputation Will Lose You Sales.
In fact, a bad reputation will lose you almost all your sales. If someone leaves you negative feedback, you will feel the pain straight away, as that rating will go right at the top of your user page for everyone to see. Who’s going to want to do business with you when they’ve just read that you “took a month to deliver the item”, or that you had “bad communication and sent a damaged item”? The answer is no-one.
Your next few items will need to be very cheap things, just to push that negative down the page. You might have to spend days or even weeks selling cheap stuff to get enough positive feedback to make anyone deal with you again.
It’s even worse if you consistently let buyers leave negative feedback - once you get below 90% positive ratings, you might as well be invisible.
You Can’t Just Open a New Account.
Besides eBay’s rules about only having one account, there are far more downsides than that to getting a new account. You literally have to start all over again from scratch.
You won’t be able to use all the different eBay features. Your existing customers won’t be able to find you any more. Your auctions will finish at a lower price because of your low feedback rating. Opening a new account is like moving to a new town to get away from a few people who are spreading rumours about you: it’s throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
A Good Reputation Will Get You Sales.
When a PowerSeller tells me something, I tend to believe them. They can be selling a pretty unlikely item, but if they guarantee it is what they say it is, then I trust them - they’re not going to risk their reputation, after all. This is the power of a reputation: people know you want to keep it, and they know you’ll go to almost any lengths to do so.
This is true even to the point that I would sooner buy something for $20 from a seller I know I can trust than for $15 from someone with average feedback. It’s worth the extra money to feel like the seller knows what they’re doing, has all their systems in place and will get me the item quickly and efficiently.
You really will find selling on eBay so much easier, and there’s only way to get a good reputation: make sure you please your customers every time. But some customers can be, well, just a little difficult to please. In the next email, we ask: is the eBay customer always right?





