Tips Related To Amazon Customer Service to Avoid Amazon Seller Suspension

Amazon is only becoming bigger and a lot of people are starting to sell on Amazon. This is the main reason that the number of buyers is also increasing and Amazon is becoming a behemoth of e-commerce.

The days are gone when it was pretty simple to sell on Amazon as you only had to create an account and start selling your products. There was no Amazon seller suspension involved and no Amazon appeal help was used to get your account reinstated because Amazon sellers were not suspended easily. But now Amazon seller suspensions are a dime a dozen and happen as easy as a sneeze.

Additionally, Amazon seller suspensions have become harder and harder to resolve.

In addition to Amazon seller suspensions becoming increasingly difficult to resolve and reinstate, buyers don’t hesitate to leave a negative review or don’t leave a review at all! Amazon seller’s already have it the hardest when it comes to Amazon.

These things like, negative feedback or buyer reviews with negative words and associations like ‘fake’, ‘cheap’ being left of reviews and feedback on Amazon sellers increase the chances of an Amazon seller account suspension, which then leads the seller seeking Amazon appeal help, loses in potential sales, stress and various other issues that comes from being suspended from selling on Amazon.

One of the major areas that can prevent and help sellers avoid being suspended is customer service.

Many times, Amazon sellers do not work very hard on their customer service and because of that, customers do not appreciate their services and usually do not leave a good review. Besides that, good customer service decreases the chances of account suspension by multiple folds and in various ways.

Below we have provided 8 tips that have related to customer service to avoid Amazon seller suspensions – or so to help reduce your chances of being suspended.

Always be Proactive:

You need to think beyond adding the FBA barcode labels to your products in order to prevent the issues of co-mingled inventory.

When you are adding the new items in your store, always make sure to go beyond the bare minimum so that you buyers can have access to all of the information they could possibly need.

This way you will be making sure you avoid an amazon seller suspension as Amazon focuses on benefiting their buyers. Make sure that you list all terms like accurate lead, clearly mentioned exchange/return policy and shipping times, make sure to remove out of stock items immediately, address any potential shipping issues to your buyers, reply to their inquiries immediately and address their concerns, refund them when appropriate.

It is beneficial for you to capture as much feedback as you possibly can so you can beat Amazon suspensions.

By this we mean that you should thoroughly understand your buyer’s complaints and their issues relating to their orders and what they could be possibly upset about so that you can appeal your Amazon suspension if you were ever suspended due to any issue related to the customer (for example inauthentic item complaints, product safety issues, defect product, not as described, etc). Try to personalize their shopping experience as best as you can without violating Amazon’s terms of service and their policies.

Try to Respond Quickly:

Another thing that will help you in avoiding an amazon seller suspension is to be responsive to Amazon and buyers as quickly as possible in order to resolve their questions, inquiries and issues.

Amazon may generally give you some warning about your response rate or a warning about a potential issue regarding your ability to sell a product after they have receive inauthentic item complaints. Typically, these warning will say something to the effect of ‘if we receive more complaints about this product you may no longer sell on Amazon.com’. It is imperative that you do not ignore these type of warnings or messages from Amazon.

Always – and we mean always respond to these messages by providing your invoices/receipts and an Amazon plan of action to show that you are taking care of their issue, resolved the issue and or have taken care of the issue. [note: this should go along with ‘always be proactive’ – do not ignore Amazon’s messages to you.

Amazon sellers have no idea how many times people let these warning go unchecked, many times because they are not proactive and do not check their Amazon seller performance notification tabs and rely on the emails they receive rather than checking their performance tab in the dashboard.

When it comes to giving replies directly to buyers, please do not respond directly to buyers who have submitted negative feedback against you. Instead, first try to check the recent feedback on your listing and politely respond to their feedback (not directly) by saying that you are looking into the matter and will make it right as soon as you can.

This is another good way to avoid and beat an Amazon suspension from happening as you are taking care of your buyers.

Also, if you know the contact information of the reporting buyer, then you are free to contact them and investigate the issue on your own.

Always be Honest:

Taking on the “Honesty is the best policy” approach will help you beat Amazon suspensions. If you are selling an item that is used, make sure to mark it as “Used” and not as “New” and vice versa.

Additionally, make sure to double check that the product description matches all of your orders and no part is left out. (Nothing is more annoying than ordering a used scanner and finding out that the power cord is not included.)

Also, it may be tempting to emulate the success of another seller by copying their products; you should not engage in trademark, intellectual property or copyright infringement. This is one of the biggest reasons that sellers get their accounts suspended. If you want to avoid and prevent an Amazon seller suspension, never do that, please don’t be that person!

Always make sure you set the expectations of customers as realistically as you can to help yourself avoid an amazon seller suspension.

Use the Power of Email:

If you send an order confirmation message to customers saying thank you or more information on how they can use their product, they will appreciate it, and will help you in the long run.

These types of tactics also help in avoiding amazon seller suspension by keeping making sure the customer can remember their message from you to them, increasing your chances of the customers resolving the issue with you rather than directly with Amazon.

This helps you in two ways. It helps avoid negative customer experiences, negative reviews, negative feedbacks and ultimately helps you avoid an Amazon seller suspension by increasing the chances that a customer recalls their dialogue with you and instead of going directly to Amazon to handle their potential issue, they come to you first where you can resolve it, avoid a negative feedback or an Amazon seller suspension.

But, if you send them unsolicited messages or bombard their inbox with anything other than providing amazing amazon customer service, you run the risk of an Amazon seller suspension or violating Amazon’s policies or terms of service.

Always remember that you should never spam your buyers but offer them an opportunity to provide you with feedback. A simply ‘hello, we just wanted to make sure you received your order and ensure everything is as it should be with your order. Thank you again!’, may get you the chance to improve your seller standing, receive good feedback and receiving good reviews and a good chance to beat Amazon suspensions with this small reminder.

Maintain a Balance in Your Priorities:

Of course, you cannot just hold the hand of every customer. No one has time for that. But, there are situations where small customer service can go a long way. For example, if you have been dealing with some issues that have decreased your seller’s rating and a customer repeatedly contacts you for an exchange.

Consider offering them the exchange - because, many situations, it will be beneficial for you just to bear the cost of an order as it will help you avoid an amazon seller suspension. Exchanges are perhaps some of the most undervalued options when speaking about avoiding Amazon suspensions.

They keep the seller happy by knowing you gave someone full satisfaction, keeps the buyer happy, increases your chances of good feedback, increases the chances of a good review, and the fact that you will have a good record with Amazon if the day ever comes that you become suspended, Amazon seller-performance will see and note that you are a wonderful seller who is customer focused – and that counts a lot in a world where many sellers try to cut corners for the sake of profit.

Maintain your Metrics:

While the management of your metrics is not exactly tied to the customer service, your feed will drive a decent portion of your metric success. And that makes the metrics a crucial marker for the experience of your customers. This should be specially paid attention to during a high-volume sales season like Christmas or Amazon prime day, for example.

While Amazon may be better than it used to be at dealing with sellers that have poor seller metrics, Amazon will still suspend your Amazon selling privileges if your metrics don’t meet their criteria mentioned below:

Order defect rate: < 1 percent.

Negative Feedback: < 5 percent.

Pre-fulfilment cancelation rate: 2.5 percent.

Late shipment rate: < 4 percent.

If you look at your seller central dashboard, it will also show different metrics like order defect rate, late response rate, and few others. So, if you see a drop in your ratings like from good to fair or from fair to poor, it may be time for you take immediate action to make sure you beat Amazon suspension.

Perfect Order Score Should be above 95 percent:

This one is not directly connected to customer support but it will drop if your customer support is not good. You will see a perfect order score at the right side of your Account Health page. This figure is out of a 100 percent. Amazon wants you to stay above 85 percent.

If your number is less than 96 percent then an easy way address this other than turning your inventory into FBA is to take a look at your bottom performers. There will be some certain products that are often returned or are creating account health issues, do you see some of these products in your inventory? Then take a look at their listings, see if it is inaccurate or there is a lack of information there. If this is the case, then update the listings to make them completer and more accurate.

But, if you cannot figure out the factor behind these products getting returned so often, then you should consider having that inventory returned to avoid any other issues in the future. One product is not going to make or break your whole Amazon business so why risk amazon seller suspension.

Be Realistic:

Just know that there will be some people that are going to leave negative reviews or negative feedback for no apparent reason – you can’t control everything. However, if you do receive such negative feedback or reviews, take a closer look and appeal to have them removed.

According to a report from Help Scout, “it usually takes 12 positive experiences in order to make up for just one unresolved negative experience”. So what is the takeaway? Make it worth it for your customers to bridge the gap of feedback by offering exceptional customer service.

Final Words:

Keep in mind that none of these tips above guarantee that your Amazon account will not get suspended. The algorithm of Amazon is too sophisticated for that. However, these tips will help you a lot in preventing and avoiding an amazon seller suspension and minimizing the chances or customer complaints, negative feedback, and negative reviews.

Additionally, if you do get suspended, then these tips will help when handling your Amazon suspension or when working with a third party Amazon appeal company like TheAppealGuru.com.

With the right knowledge or what may have caused the issue along with the proper steps Amazon seller performance will reinstate your account, this is because Amazon wants to keep all of their sellers as happy they can just as much as they their sellers to keep their customers happy.

If you have any questions feel welcomed to email us at [email protected]

Additionally, if you need to appeal your Amazon seller suspension please click here: https://theappealguru.com/

Thank you.