Professional email contact boosts buyer loyalty and encourages repeat customers.
Email etiquette is one of the pillars of good customer service for eBay sellers. Good customer boosts buyer loyalty, encouraging repeat customers. Here are three easy ways to hone your email communication with buyers.
1. Make the email message all about your buyer
As an online seller, your world revolves around your buyers NOT the other way around. Tailor email messages to the buyers needs first before your own. Read through your messages and count the number of times you write “I”. Try to change “I” statements to “you” statements or “we” statements.
2. Keep emails short and to the point
Some sellers will write needlessly lengthy messages to buyers. As Olivia Fox Cabane, author of The Charisma Myth states, “watch the return on investment of your sentences: measure the length of your e-mail against the value it was delivering…perfection is not when there is no more to add, but when there is no more to subtract” (Cabane 185).
3. Acknowledge your mistakes and apologize
Whenever you screw up, own up to your buyer. Your buyer will appreciate your honesty. NEVER imply or accuse your buyer of lying to you. Let’s say a buyer tells you that the order is missing some pieces. Even if you’d swear on your grandma’s grave that you counted accurately, offer to fix the problem anyway. The vast majority of buyers are honest so you generally want to give them the benefit of the doubt. You could dig in your heels and be “right”…or you could build trust and goodwill with your buyers, ultimately encouraging repeat customers. Choose wisely.
Work Cited:
Cabane, Olivia Fox. The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism: New York: Penguin, 2012. Print.
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