Expert Amazon seller says keeping promises to customers is #1 priority

Payoneer Community

December 14, 2015

This years selling season was intense. We sat down with Mr. Kwang-gyu Yoon to get his expert advice on how to create a success when selling through the holiday season (or any holiday for that matter).

What advice would you give online sellers for the holiday season?

In my personal opinion, focusing on delivery is most important. Delivery always creates the biggest issue, no matter where you are sending goods from. In some cases, the best option is in fact to use the most expensive delivery service. This is not; however, the most effective (or feasible) approach for all sellers, so it is important for you to build your own strategy. When the holiday season comes, the sales volume of all sellers, including myself, also increases. Such sales volume increases can delay deliveries.

How can sellers prevent shipping delays?

In order to prevent delays from occurring, we need to schedule for longer handling times or arrange shipping options so the goods arrive a little in advance. Such efforts could decrease the number of claims associated with delivery. For example, when selling on eBay one solution could be to change the default setting of the handling time from one day to two or three days. Changing the default settings of the handling options might cause a decrease in the sales volume, but it ensures buyers receive their products by the promised time and that your customer review rating doesn’t take a hit.

For best-selling items, extended delivery times could result in a decrease in sales. Is making handling times longer really a must?

Hmmm… It really depends on each individual seller and what they value. In my opinion, we sellers do not sell only during the year-end holiday season which lasts only one or two months. It’s important to consider performance for a period of several months after the year-end holiday season. If you do not adjust the options (default shipping, etc.) the issue doesn’t just go away. Sales volumes will soar during the holiday season and any issues associated with delayed delivery (and customer feedback will showcase this) your next month’s performance will be affected. If sales volumes increase during the holiday season, but then the next month’s performance weakens and future sales performance is affected negatively – then isn’t it clear that we are going to suffer losses? I think so.

Did you ever have a situation where you were negatively affected by shipping mishaps?

For me, in my early years as a seller, I set tight delivery handling times during holiday seasons as part of my efforts to increase sales volumes. At that time, I had never experienced the explosion of sales during the holiday season in the United States, and I was only focused on increasing my sales volumes. The result? I could not take all inbound orders, as there were so many coming in. As for delivery, the local handling company could not deliver goods on time, even if the goods had arrived in the United States on time, 60-70% of my products could not be forwarded to customers on time.

As a result, even though sales had increased during the holiday season, I remember I received a lot of bad feedback from clients and therefore suffered negative effects for several months afterward. One thing we must remember is that we sellers must consider not only our profits during the holiday season but also our long-term performance.

How can my delivery record this month affect my sales performance next month?

Recently, it seems that the main focuses of big marketplaces are changing. For example, Amazon focuses on actually confirming whether goods arrive on the date that the seller had promised, rather than asking if such goods arrived on time or earlier when users leave reviews.

Also, you can see one of the updates eBay made in November became a big topic. Their use of the expression “on-time delivery” shows us that big marketplaces want not for sellers to expedite goods through express delivery services for speed, but rather to deliver the goods to the customers by the promised time. That is, the focus seems to have shifted from speed to keeping promises.

Is there anything else you would like to share?

During the year-end holiday season, the issue of stock is also extremely important. Managing your stock well is important, but keeping promises with customers has always been the most important issue. Therefore, I think it is wisest for sellers to keep their promises to customers.

Would you like to share your story with the Payoneer community? Please send us an email at community@payoneer.com.

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