Customer Relations & eCommerce Frank Ross on 29 Apr 2007 04:45 pm
Amazon Reigns in Control on Customers?
Effective May 1, Amazon will no longer be showing customer information in their “SOLD SHIP NOW” email notices. This is to protect customer privacy and affects Amazon Marketplace Sellers and Amazon Webstores.
I’ve also noticed that they now mask the email address of the customer in the web based seller panel. If you want to contact the customer via the web panel, you have to go through their web based messaging system. Is Amazon removing access to the customers completely?
Granted, Amazon merchants don’t have the right to send customers unsolicited email. But as an Amazon seller, I do like to use my own templates and email service to notify the customer of the order status.
At Amazon in fact there are at least 3 opportunities to get in touch with the customer. 1 - To acknowledge the order was placed and thank them for the order (plant URL in signature). 2 - To notify the customer the order was shipped and give the tracking number (plant URL in signature again). 3 - Follow-up with the customer about 3 weeks after order to thank them again and ask for feedback (plant URL in signature again). A little soft marketing; now I wonder if I’ll still be able to do that?
The question that I can’t seem to get answered is if there will be any change to the Download Orders file. That is a CSV file that Amazon sellers can download and get their orders into Excel for easier processing. At the present time, the customer email addresses are in there. We’ll see if it’s there on May 1!
Tags: Amazon Marketplace, Amazon Webstore, Amazon Selling, Amazon Customers