- Be professional. The biggest sin of many of the sellers that eBay buyers complain most egregiously about is a simple lack of professionalism. Remember that buyers are people, too, and that this is a sale you're making. Don't do anything in handling any situation (from posting an auction to resolving a dispute) that you wouldn't do when face-to-face in a retail store.
- Be flexible and plan for difficulties. This includes things like accepting exchange or refund requests, being able and willing to respond to customer inquiries, offering “business-like” payment methods like PayPal and credit cards, offering detailed information about any non-“AS-IS” products that you sell, and offering explicit warranties or guarantees of one kind or another most of the time.
- Develop a sound set of business practices. Any disorganized or haphazard business is destined to upset at least a few customers. The more disorganized or haphazard the business, the greater the percentage of customers who are going to feel as if they've “slipped through the cracks,” and who will become not merely dissatisfied, but active in their pursuit of satisfaction at your expense. Develop a process or workflow for everything. Set aside time to answer your email and to phone people back that have asked you to call. Track your shipments as carefully as your customers do and know when they've gone wrong. (It goes without saying that you should implement processes to ensure that every customer receives payment and shipment confirmation, along with any tracking number involved.) Be not just willing but ready to handle exchanges and warranty claims in an organized manner. Keep meticulous books for everything you do so that you'll always be able to respond to customer inquiries or complaints quickly and informatively, and so that customers don't have to keep repeating their circumstances to you with each new contact.
- Be careful about knowing your marketing audience. Too many professional sellers simply buy what's available as a wholesale lot and expect to turn it all around on eBay without any further headaches. All products, however, are not created equal, and neither are all listings. Don't market complex, difficult-to-use, or “advanced” products to “beginner” audiences that expect plug-and-play style goods with a minimum of hassle. The same goes vice-versa. Market your goods carefully to an appropriate audience, and feel free to explicitly state that you do or don't want to provide lots of after-sale service. Feel free to use terms like “Expert buyers only, please!” if you don't feel like guaranteeing that “We can give you all the assistance you need at our 1-800 number, free!” Don't work to disguise your item's flaws any more than you want to play them up. Be honest about them and be to make them visible to every potential bidder.
- Make peace with buyer-seller communication. Buyers are going to come to you with their problems, even if you tell them not to in your auctions—even, in fact, if you declare an item to be sold on an AS-IS/WHERE-IS basis and state that you never want to hear about it again. What else is a buyer to do? They're looking out for their own interests. Refusing to communicate with buyers is not only bad form, but it can lead to negatives simply for that reason. A buyer that feels you're there for them—that believes you're listening and responsive—is going to hold off on giving a negative so long as they feel like you're working with them in a fair and honest manner. Prompt, professional communication is essential for buyer satisfaction, whether or not a transaction goes wrong.
- Learn to provide customer service. Times on eBay have changed. Like it or not, eBay is no longer a cross between a flea market and a swap meet where idiosyncratic buyers are happy to buy eclectica or to have infinite patience for eBay sellers that are “just like them.” A good portion of today's eBay buyers expect a store-like experience. Those sellers that prosper are those that are best able to provide it. You will rarely, if ever, receive a negative after offering a prompt refund or an exchange in which you pay for the shipping both ways. It eats into the bottom line, sure—but it will also keep negatives and bay and return buyers coming back. It's a calculation that you have to be prepared to make.
Bringing Buyer and Seller Together
What's really needed as eBay grows—as is so often the case in the other areas of life in which we have to interact with other people—is an increase in basic professionalism, open communication, and flexibility.Those eBay members that are going to prosper as eBay continues to evolve are those that are careful, prudent, reasonable and patient (in the case of buyers) and those that are organized, responsive, and service-oriented (in the case of sellers). The truth of the matter is that eBay has one bias these days, and it's not toward buyers or sellers. Instead, the bias is toward the kind of marketplace that eBay intends to be—something less structured than an Amazon.com, perhaps, but certainly something more structured that it has ever been in the past. For many, that's a very good thing. For others, it's something to be dealt with, with reservations.
Either way, it's where eBay's headed.
