Good Communication Promotes Positive Feedback on eBay
by J. Stephen Pope
Good communication is the key to encouraging your auction buyers to leave you positive feedback. Such communication also helps avoid most negative feedback on eBay.
Good communication helps to avoid misunderstandings. For example, if surface shipping takes six to eight weeks but the customer doesn't know this, he may expect almost immediate delivery. When such quick delivery doesn't materialize, he may feel that he has been cheated or that your service is slow and poor.
Thus, try to spell out delivery time frames and other details as much as possible. Is your refund policy clear? Is your product clearly and accurately described in your auction ad? Does your product's quality meet or exceed the expectations created by your auction ad?
If, for whatever reason, your e-mail response is slow, the customer may assume that you aren't delivering on your promises. Prompt e-mail communication can help reassure the customer and gives evidence of good customer service.
Basically, state in your auctions: "If you have any questions about this auction, please e-mail me." If a person is expecting instant delivery of an e-book but instead you send him the information via the postal service, he might be disappointed. Nip all such problems in the bud by encouraging your prospective buyers to ask questions.
How can you encourage buyers to leave positive feedback for you? Simply state that you'll leave positive feedback for them after you've received theirs.
Since they are leaving the feedback first, they will hesitate to leave you negative feedback, knowing that you may respond in kind. If you leave positive feedback for the buyer first, they may never return the favour.
With good communication, you can often avoid receiving negative feedback. Try to do everything that is reasonable to make your customer happy.
However, what if you do receive negative feedback on one of your auctions? What can you do about it?
Under certain, very limited circumstances (such as an extortion attempt), eBay might reverse negative feedback unjustly given to you. In most cases, however, eBay will not reverse negative feedback.
You can use eBay's "Mutual Feedback Withdrawal" procedure. This is where both the buyer and seller agree to withdraw negative feedback from each other. Thus, the negative feedback will be removed from both of your total scores (thus improving both feedback ratings).
The negative comments themselves won't be removed by eBay. However, your comments left in response to a negative feedback will also stay to tell your side of the story.
Yes, good communication can lead to more positive feedback from your auctions. Such communication can also help you to avoid and even reverse negative feedback. So, by all means, promote positive feedback on eBay through good communication.
J. Stephen Pope, President of Pope Consulting Inc., has been helping clients to earn maximum business profits for over twenty-five years.
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