Can customers reach you by phone?

Have you added a Customer Service phone number to your account? While it is an optional field it shouldn’t be overlooked when updating your business information. 

From experience, I have found that Customer service starts before the customer has even bought an item from you. Beyond price, prospective buyers also want to see how available a company is If they have a question or concern. The more ways they have to reach you, the more likely any concerns they have can be resolved quickly.

The important thing to remember when considering entering a Customer Service number is it should be actively monitored and answered. A phone that doesn’t have anyone answering it, or that doesn’t have a professional voice mail message, can create a frustrating customer experience.

To add your Customer service phone number: go to your Settings in your seller account, under Seller Information.

-Aleece

How can a new order show "Shipment is late?"

You may have run across this situation: a new order in your Manager Orders section of your Amazon seller account is labeled “Shipment is late.”
 
How could this happen and what does it mean for your business?

While the payment processing normally takes minutes, in rare cases, validating the buyer's payment method can take substantially longer. We do not send an order to you until we have confirmed that the buyer's payment method is valid.

When Amazon is unable to validate a payment method, we send e-mail notifications to the buyer asking them to update their payment information so the order can be processed. If the buyer does not do that promptly, it can cause payment validation to take longer than your handling time for the order, and by the time the order appears in Manage Orders the ship date may be in the past.

In this type of situation the new order status will display as "Shipment is late," but as long as you ship promptly once the order is sent to you, your seller metrics will not normally be impacted by the late shipment order status.

-Aleece

Starting Off on the Right Foot

The most common question we receive is: “Where do I begin?” Here are some good steps to help you get started:

• Provide the business name that will be displayed on Amazon.com so that they remember your company.
• Make sure your business contact information is current (e-mail & phone number if available) so that we may contact you, if necessary.
• Keep credit card and bank account information current for payments and settlements.
• Provide shipping and returns policies to help build buyer trust.
• Only enter company info specific to how you manage your business on Amazon.com.
• Choose shipping rate settings so buyers know what your shipping costs.

- Aleece

Happy April Fools' Day!

The favorite practical joke in my office right now is the Annoy-a-tron 2.0 and I will tell you it lives up to its name. I have been trying to decide what retaliation to come up with, which lead me to Amazon.com’s Gags & Practical Jokes section. Once again I am grateful for all of you, the sellers, who contribute so much to the wide selection in the Amazon.com catalog.

Have a happy April Fools' Day!

Have fun and keep it safe!

Best Practices for Submitting Item Feeds

If you use feeds to update your product listings, there are a number of things you can do to decrease their processing time.

After the initial upload, you do not need to provide all product information in your feed, unless you are updating all aspects of your existing listing. If you intend to update only your prices and quantities, your feed will process more quickly if it doesn’t include any listing data you don’t wish to modify.

Feed data can be broken into four parts:

1. Price
2. Inventory and lead time to ship
3. Images
4. Product Data and Relationship Data
    (description, bullet points, category, etc.)

To create Pricing and Inventory feeds, eliminate from your feed any product data that typically does not change (particularly Product, Relationship and Image information). You can maintain a separate feed that contains full product data which you can upload when that data changes. Below are the fields required for creation of Pricing and Inventory feeds:

• sku, item-price, currency – this will update just your price (you can submit sale prices in this feed)
• sku, quantity, leadtime-to-ship – this will updated your quantity; leadtime-to-ship must be included if the item does not have the default 1-2 day leadtime-to-ship

- Brent M.

What is the status of my case?

You’ve probably already noticed that many of Amazon’s e-mails contain a subject line that starts with a case ID number. When you contact Amazon Seller Support with an issue, we track your issue through our case system. We understand your concerns are important, and we do our best to research and resolve them as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, some cases take longer than others depending on the complexity of the reported issues. The wait can be painful, but not receiving any updates during the wait would be just plain agonizing.

The Amazon Services Case Log was created to alleviate this pain point. This functionality:

• Allows Seller Support to update your case in real time by leaving a contact within the case that can be seen through the case log (no need to create a new e-mail or call Seller Support to find out the status).
• Captures communications between you and Amazon by logging all messages to and from Seller Support (no more worrying about missing important messages and updates).
• Sends e-mail confirmation when you create or update a case (which includes the case number for your convenience).
• Provides historical case history if you’re looking for helpful information from previous cases (no need to scan all your old e-mails).
• Gives you the ability to add a message directly to your case (ensuring that all related information is kept in one place).
• Tells you the status of the case (if it’s “open,” we’re working on it).

In addition, when you contact us by phone, you can help us assist you even faster by providing the case number, which is now clearly visible in the Amazon Services Case Log!

- E.K.

Daylight Saving Time is here!

You may know to change your clocks to accommodate Daylight Saving Time, but it is also important to update your computers and servers that handle your seller account information. If you use any automation on your machines, not updating the time can hinder your ability to use it.