Friday, April 11th, 2008
PeSA / ECMTA Best Practices “Improving Your eBay DSRs”
I realize I run the risk of turning this blog into a Marketplaces-only forum rather than an all-encompassing discussion hub for all things “Inc”, but I am joining Lorrie Norrington and the team down at the 2008 Spring eCommerce Summit in New Orleans later this month so I thought it would be a good idea for me to sit in on the PeSA / ECMTA Best Practices conference call yesterday afternoon. The topic of discussion was “Improving Your eBay DSR” and the call was hosted by Brandon Dupsky, managing director of eCommerce Markets for the E-Commerce Merchants Trade Association (ECMTA).
The call was interesting in that it didn’t focus on the perceived benefits or drawbacks to the Detailed Seller Rating (DSR) system, rather it focused on the challenges sellers face with DSRs and how to implement some best practices around that. It seemed to go beyond DSR 101 (one participant at the end of the call indicated that she found it one of the more worthwhile roundtable calls she had attended).
After Brandon provided a brief overview of what DSRs are and why they’re important he jumped into the meat of the presentation. He cited three key challenges that sellers face with DSRs:
1. Mixed messages from eBay. There is a message to buyers that states that 4.0 should be applied to an experience in which there was an “accurate” description; they were “satisfied” with communication; shipping was “quick” and S&H was “reasonable”. However, the message to the seller is that 4.0 means you can’t qualify for PowerSeller status; you don’t get good seller status; you could drop down into the bottom 1% in your category and receive seller restrictions.
2. A mixed usage of whole numbers and fractions with regard to scores. In other words, a buyer can only leave a 1, 2,3 4, or 5 feedback score and as a result, sellers are “being punished” with fractional scores of 4.0, 4.4, 4.6, 4.8.
3. Good DSR scores have less of an impact on sellers than bad DSR scores. A single 5-star DSR will not help the overall average as much as a single 1-star DSR will hurt the overall average.
The proceeding ways in which it was suggested sellers could ensure that they get the best DSRs possible all had an underlying theme. Educating the buyer with impeccable messaging and setting their expectations from the beginning seemed to be the biggest call to action to sellers (which echoed a Chatter Blog post back in February). Based on presentations and discussions I’ve seen and heard internally, that seems to be the call to action for the Marketplaces team too. Yes, the changes we’ve seen come out over the past few months are focused on providing the best overall experience for the buyer on eBay but it is the education and the ability to meet and beat the expectations of the buyer that will result in optimal DSRs.
There were a number of simple tricks and tools discussed on the call. For example, emphasizing 5-Star service in every step of communication to the buyer or potential buyer. Another was setting expectations and then beating them (whether it be regarding shipping cost, time or description of item).
The number one question that seemed to be asked throughout the presentation was “What are you doing to keep your customer happy?”
For those of you still on the fence about attending the conference later this month, the ECMTA has put together this handy-dandy Top 10 Reasons to attend. If you are heading down there, feel free to email me because I’d love to take the opportunity to meet as many people as I can in person.
Cheers,
RBH
Tagged: best practices, brandon+dupsky, chatter, chatter blog, dsr, ebay, ecmta, ecommerce, lorrie+norrington, marketplaces, pesa, rating, trade show
CrunchyPostingGoodnessOn 04.21.2008 at 1:08 pm Said:
@ Noblespirit
“However, in as much as there is a transactional trade relation between buyer and seller where any sort of funds are exchanged for a product or service, a casual seller should not enjoy any greater relief from duty bound obligation to perform. I believe in latitude as long as it is framed within the bounds of the same responsbility all sellers are expected to adhere to.”
Exactly! Of course casuals sellers should still be required to ship the item and answer questions, but this is where the difference of selling levels come into play. For instance, as a professional seller, I work full-time at home. I’m usually always at my computer, or have my Blackberry nearby. I can instantly respond to questions from my buyers and provide custom shipping quotes on the fly. I can also purchase packing peanuts, tape, and bubble wrap in bulk quantities, which reduces my shipping costs significantly. However, a small seller who works a full-time job outside of the home or just buys a bubble envelope from the local store when something needs to ship, can not possibly compete with my level of service ans shipping prices - nor should they have to.
Let buyers choose which seller they wish to deal with based on the level of service they wish for their shopping experience, but do not allow them to punish a casual seller with low stars because they unrealistically expected professional service and shipping costs from a casual seller. eBay needs to create different classes of sellers and make sure buyers are fully aware of the difference in classes in order to effectively and efficiently provide for the needs and wants of all of their users.
@ Brenda
“What is sadly lacking within the overall site is consistancy.”
There should be no consistency when it comes to the sellers on eBay, since eBay was initially designed for the casual seller, but slowly attracted professional sellers too. Diversity in sellers and items is what is special and different about eBay. If eBay loses than, then they will lose their only competitive edge in the e-commerce marketplace.
“Don’t get me wrong; the upper tiers of Ebay seem to suffer from the same lack of real communication skills. Maybe it’s a common factor that drew you all to internet venues in the first place.”
Actually the benefit of working from home drew me to the internet venues. Until I worked for myself, all of my previous jobs were extremely central to customer service and personal interactions. I believe that statement is a pretty broad and unfounded sweeping generalization to make of those who choose to sell online.
MechelleOn 04.21.2008 at 3:30 pm Said:
Um, why did you remove my post responding to Brenda?
There was not any profanity
I said nothing beyond responding to her negative and offensive generalizations of those of us who sell on eBay.
Please inform me of what motivated your decision to censor my comments
MechelleOn 04.21.2008 at 3:44 pm Said:
hmm- I wrote it separately, but I have an ongoing document that I type comments in maybe I accidentally copied all of it
I’ll just submit again - if you prefer
MechelleOn 04.21.2008 at 3:48 pm Said:
@ Brenda
“I understand that the sellers are not employess but they are still representatives of Ebay.”
Again, no- I don’t represent eBay I represent my store. You need to recognize that we do in fact rent space and pay for services. In any other forum there would be no suggestions that the customer were employees, representative of the company that they are a customer of, or that the customer need to spend their time keeping the other customers inline.
In fact eBay’s lack of maintaining, promoting, and insisting on the eBay marketplace be a safe site is resulting in harm to my business.
“What is sadly lacking within the overall site is common sense.”
Interesting perspective of the selling community within the eBay marketplace overall is we‘re lacking in commonsense. Care to share who you see on this board that is lacking in common sense and what your basis is for that interpretation? My perception is a group of people who are fully aware of the potential negative consequence these changes introduce to the selling community as a whole and individually. The natural extension of a negative experience will affect the buying community as well.
For example:
1) Many ethical members of the selling community have in fact left eBay, which of course results in a higher ratio of the deviant selling members. Not so good for the buying community.
2) Many members of the selling community in an attempt to protect their reputation have taken terms of service to the extreme by denying the ability for buying members with feeding back less than 10 to 25 to bid their auctions. Again not so good for the buying community.
3) As members of the selling community find their selves losing money do to the increasing frequency of demands from deviant buying members they will be forced to evaluate the benefit of doing business on eBay at all. The decrease in ethical selling members will increase the number of deviant selling members for those buying members who haven’t caught on to the even greater likely hood of negative buying experiences the appeal of eBay will quickly decline as a result of their being sold counterfeit products, never receiving their package, receiving items in a condition not even remotely what was sold to them, and the list goes on. I can’t imagine this being a positive outcome for the buying community.
I suggest a re-evaluation of who is lacking in commonsense.
“What is very sadly lacking within the overall site is viable customer service for all levels of users.”
You act as though you have experienced buying from every member of the selling community. You are just as outrageous in your generalizations as is eBay executives. I don’t know how many purchases you have made, but I have a rather large purchasing history and I have encountered maybe 4 sellers who I found less than professional. The reality is the average consumer shopping in other online forums and in the tangible marketplace will experience many more transaction with less than optimal customer service relative to the number of purchases I have made in the eBay marketplace. Your assessment is grossly exaggerated and offensive!
“A seller with 1,000’s of feedback will lose little with one bad feedback.”
So, that makes it okay to leave unjustifiable negative feedback for someone? Do you apply the same logic to the reputation of the buyer? If so, which should be the case if you believe it is of no consequence for the seller, can I assume you have no issue with “retaliatory feedback”? If someone gave you a negative when it is not deserved are you fine with that, because your number of feedback can handle it in regard to feedback ratings? I doubt you would feel this way if you have this type of experience.
“Don’t get me wrong; the upper tiers of Ebay seem to suffer from the same lack of real communication skills. Maybe it’s a common factor that drew you all to internet venues in the first place.”
WOW! You have some gall to suggest the those of us who have chosen to do business within the eBay marketplace have done so because we are incompetent and lacking in “communication skills”. Maybe that is the appeal for you in your intention to sale on eBay in the future, but was of no consequence in my decision to do so and I highly doubt this is the case for the eBay selling community. Once again you are way out of line in your insinuations.
“I am not logged in; yet can read this blog and post to my hearts content. I question the wisdom of allowing this much angst to be spewed forth into the world.”
Interesting statement coming from you - I do believe this is your comment on Auction Bytes:
by: Brenda Mon Apr 21 2008 021:58:58 How Ebay went about the proposed policy shifts was offensive. I was in the process of getting ready to sell.
I can’t rid myself of the feelings of distrust. Ebay shows no real respect to any of it’s users.
I have to question the non stop posting that all the changes generated. It just isn’t right on so many different levels. I have bought next to nothing since this all began. For me it boils down to trust and the impact of all the negative press.
The leadership of Ebay supposedly has good reputations walking in to this quagmire. I can’t understand how these supposedly highly trained and experianced business professionals screwed up a simple business meeting so badly. It literally boggles my mind. I see the entirety of Ebay as being psychologically disturbed and bottom line I don’t feel safe dealing with crazy people.
Please correct me if I am mistaken. Would this be equitable to the “type of spew” you are referring to? Hmmm
“It is Ebay’s responsibility to instill trust into me, not the other way around. Sellers may not be obligated to help police the site, but as Dr. Phil is fond of saying, ” How’s it working for you?”
I’ll ignore the clear contradiction of your statement, and just focus on the “How’s it working for you?”
I again assert I am in no way obliged to police the eBay marketplace, however I do! As a matter of fact I report every policy violating listing I encounter. Even with the clear understanding relative to my experience of eBay’s reaction - rather inaction I continue to report the listings. I currently in my watch have 5 counterfeit Mac Cosmetic auction that I reported to eBay T&S 3 days prior to auction end. They never pulled the listings and everyone of them sold. EBay is well aware of these counterfeit cosmetic auctions- they are exclusively listed by Thailand and China members. Every experienced cosmetic seller is aware of these counterfeits and avoid purchasing obviously. However, I know do to my experiences being sold fake Mac on three separate occasions when just starting out that many new sellers and oblivious buyers are being robbed by these deviants at a unacceptable high frequency.
So I would like to know how eBay’s lack of enforcing their own policies when reputable sellers take the time to try and rid the eBay marketplace of these deviants “How’s that working for you”?
MechelleOn 04.21.2008 at 3:53 pm Said:
yes I see that post and that is what I did (copied the entire document) I resubmitted the post so if you care to switch it out there won’t be the same paragraphs as my other posts
permacrisisOn 04.21.2008 at 3:58 pm Said:
crunchy: “eBay needs to create different classes of sellers and make sure buyers are fully aware of the difference in classes”
Exactly!
Even just tiering the site into new and used, would be a great start.
R K Smythe’s ‘Ebay Classic’ is an idea whose time has come!!
CrunchyPostingGoodnessOn 04.22.2008 at 10:17 am Said:
@ Brenda “Sellers may not be obligated to help police the site, but as Dr. Phil is fond of saying, ” How’s it working for you?””
The problem is that in one instance eBay wants the active input of its users, such as helping to police the site, but in the other instance it wants to operate as a controller by instituting policies and procedures, which the vast majority of users seem to disagree with. Ebay can not have it both ways. Either it chooses to institute policies and takes the responsibility of enforcing and monitoring abuses of those polices, or it institutes policies according to what users want, and leave it up to the users to enforce and monitor them.
Amazon allows for input from the community, but it has never tried to present itself as anything other than a service. It is not a partner and it is not my friend. Ebay is trying to be a friend and partner, but not allowing equal control and influence. If eBay truely wants to compete in the e-commerce marketplace, then it needs to decide, once and for all, which it is going to be - a service or a community.
@ Permacisis
“R K Smythe’s ‘Ebay Classic’ is an idea whose time has come!!”
Never heard of it, but I will try to Google “R K Smythe” and see what it is. 
CrunchyPostingGoodnessOn 04.22.2008 at 10:20 am Said:
I’m going to just try and address a bunch of points here. They are not directed at anyone in particular - just observations:
Mechelle stated, “You need to recognize that we do in fact rent space and pay for services. In any other forum there would be no suggestions that the customer were employees, representative of the company that they are a customer of, or that the customer need to spend their time keeping the other customers inline.”
- I agree completely! Which is again why eBay can not hope to be a partner in any user’s business. eBay is a tool, a service, which collects fees based on use. That is all it should be and all anyone should ever regard it as.
I also agree with the other points made by Mechelle. These changes will lead, and have already led to good sellers leaving eBay, which results in less selections for buyers. They also put sellers on the defensive to institute their own policy changes, with regards to new buyers, in order to protect themselves from the threats the recent eBay changes have opened them up to.
I would also point out that Mechelle’s experiences as a buyer, “but I have a rather large purchasing history and I have encountered maybe 4 sellers who I found less than professional” seem to indicate that people will continue to buy on eBay, despite a bad experience. So perhaps eBay is jumping the gun by thinking buyers are not returning to eBay simply because of a bad buying experience? I have had some bad experiences at a restaurant or a particular store, but that doesn’t mean I will never eat or shop there again. If a certain place has what I want, I will return, despite a previous bad experience.
permacrisisOn 04.22.2008 at 12:07 pm Said:
“Ebay can not have it both ways.”
Right– be the bellhop or be the sheriff, can’t be both…
at least not credibly.
JewelrySellerOn 04.22.2008 at 4:53 pm Said:
Many comments in this discussion thread (and much more) have been posted in the eBay Jewelry Discussion Groups “Your Seller Feedback Score”. You might want to read the posts.
JewelrySellerOn 04.22.2008 at 5:02 pm Said:
It is wrong to assume that -
eBay is being ‘honest’ with sellers. They want to eliminate at least 20% to 33% of PowerSellers. They are not interested in any ‘fair’ or ‘level playing field’ for all sellers or PowerSellers.
Donahoe, in an interview, has said that he intends to favor large sellers in the future. There could be many reasons given, but the net result will be the same…there will be far fewer sellers on eBay in the future.
And I expect that other product/service categories will be eliminated as Mr. Donahoe cleans up the ‘flea market’ look of eBay that he has publicly disdained.
JewelrySellerOn 04.22.2008 at 6:25 pm Said:
eBay plans to eliminate small PowerSellers who cannot maintain at least 10 buyers giving feedback averaging above 4.5 in each of 4 DSR categories every 30 days.
Due to the current economic recession that has reduced our sales to U.S. addresses as well as export sales, we have seen our # of sales fall dramatically. These lower levels can put us at risk. Not every buyer leaves feedback or DSR feedback. And, if any of the feedback is less than 5 in all DSR categories, our PowerSeller status could be at risk.
eBay appears to have no concern for smaller PowerSellers or PowerSellers who have any type of ’seasonal demand’ by customers. The new ‘yardstick’ of judgement for PowerSeller status also does not accommodate an economic recession like we are currently experiencing around the world.
JewelrySellerOn 04.22.2008 at 9:20 pm Said:
DSR score thoughts -
Not everyone in a restaurant gives a 15% tip, a 20% tip, a 25% tip. You cannot assume that buyers, regardless of the ‘buying experience’ will give a 5 ‘tip’ to a seller, even if the shipping was free! I know a seller that gives free USPS Priority Mail and gets less than 5 DSR scores.
Ask yourself what you can do to lessen the ‘cost’ of getting a ‘less than 5′ DSR score, because you will get some. Ask yourself what volume of transactions per month you need in order to get your minimum of 10 DSR scores in 4 categories every month plus extras for no feedback or ‘less than 5′ feedback, because you will get some.
Adjust your perspective -
Change your attitude. Assume that eBay never planned for this DSR score to be ‘fair’ to the seller/PowerSeller. They didn’t.
Assume that eBay has changed the rule book for the ‘game’. If you want to play in the new ‘game’, you have to look at the ‘new rule book’ and determine how to play the eBay ‘game’ using their new ‘rule book’ in a way that you will not lose, if not win.
There will be many sellers who drop out. eBay wants this to happen. If you have a lot invested AND you want to hold on during this tumultuous sea voyage on the good ship ‘eBay’, you will need a plan of what to do, how to do it, when to do it. And you will need a ‘Plan B’, knowing where the flotation devices and lifeboats for your business are located.
Prepare yourself for new eBay ‘rule books’ in the future. This is only the beginning of a series of changes that eBay embarks upon as it transitions to some new eBay-Amazon-WalMart it wants to become.
All of this is a ‘master plan’ to re-shape eBay, hatched in detail, discussed, ‘run past’ the corporate lawywers, etc. beginning 1-2 years ago.
DaveyOn 04.23.2008 at 7:26 am Said:
I’m sure Coca Cola’s great plan for New Coke in the mid-80’s had all the “incontrovertible” data behind it and all the great plans to become an entity they were not (Pepsi). Corporate wags telling us how we preferred the new product. It failed. But, the corporation had the good sense to get back to its original “value proposition”, admit a mistake, and move on to great future growth.
Let’s see if this debacle gets the same reaction. There are so many parallels…
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