The importance of keeping in touch with your Amazon customers

By Sharon Fussell, July 9, 2013

Well it’s that time of year again where you might be jetting off on holiday somewhere nice and sunny.

Or you just might like to have a nice break from Amazon-listing and searching for books etc.

Normally, we would be in France at this time of year: we would take at least 3 weeks away in July.

This year we went earlier in the year, with a couple of weeks in May. It was just so relaxing, mainly because we had no access to the Internet. Of course, as an online retailer, this could have created havoc.

However, luckily we did have email access on our blackberry, thus we were able to text and accept emails.

Sometimes though, we have noted that messages sent direct to our Amazon account get spammed out by our server: this means we are totally unaware we have any messages unless we actually go onto our account.

To get around any potential pitfalls from customer queries being unanswered for the duration of our stay, our son, who opted to remain at home, was under strict instructions to double-check the Amazon account to make sure no customers were trying to access us.

Luckily, all was quiet.

Actually, to be fair, we get little contacts from customers. This is because we sell using FBA, so Amazon tend to receive any queries and deal with them on our behalf.

As you know, it’s vitally important to reply to emails sent to our Amazon account with 24 hours.

Amazon may penalise us sellers, if we fail to reply quickly to queries.

So if you are going away on holiday, you may be contacted by a buyer and you would not know.
How to get around this issue?

The problem is that even if you place your account as inactive, this will not help with incoming messages.

If you can ensure Amazon emails can be accessed by phone, that will help, provided they are not spammed by your server of course.

Or you could ask a family member or friend to keep a look out on your Amazon account for you.

Or failing all that, you do have one more option…

All your customers require is a simple message that informs them that your account is on vacation and they will be contacted as soon as possible after a certain date (which you enter on the system).

There are instructions within Amazon to help you do that.

If you are going on holiday soon, then make sure you relax and enjoy yourself so you’re refreshed and raring to hit those charity shops and second-hand book sources when you return.

Happy holidays!