Q&A: How important is customer service?

QUESTION: As a new online bookseller, I wonder how important our relationships with customers are. Of course it's always important to deliver what you promise, do a good job, etc. in almost anything you undertake in business. But why does everybody preach so much about the importance of customer service? Isn't this one business where you are likely to sell to a customer only once, especially if you're not a megaseller? And even if you did sell to someone more than once, they probably wouldn't remember your bookstore name anyway?

Or does it really boil down to feedback, where having a 5-star rating results in many more sales than a 4.7 star rating, for example? I always ship within the deadlines, but other sellers spend up to $1.00 on elaborate packaging and 3 minutes of packaging time per book, in the name of customer satisfaction. While this may produce higher satisfaction, I would rather ship using an easier/cheaper method, that will deliver the book fully intact but may not evoke praise for "professionalism."

ANSWER: I think you're right, as booksellers participating on a network, we don't have the same necessity of acquiring and keeping customers that traditional businesses have had. Platforms like Amazon or eBay bring us our customers, and that's why we pay those commissions.

So it's true that for many buyers, we're anonymous, an unknown quantity. From some of the e-mails I get from customers, it's obvious they think they're dealing with Amazon, that I'm an Amazon employee.

Nevertheless, I do stress customer service for two main reasons:

1. To protect your business. If you're selling books to earn money, you'll be more competitive if you can display a good feedback record. Many of the customers buying cheap books don't look at feedback, but those who buy expensive books do.

2. Providing good service can make your business easier to manage. That's my philosophy, there's no way I can prove it works for everybody, but it works for me. It's just a general approach, like checking your e-mail every few hours and being pro-active about handling little problems that come up. I believe if you can nip little problems in the bud, you can prevent a lot of big problems from happening. If you can prevent the big problems, it eliminates the big headaches that can suck up so much of your time.

As far as packing materials go, when I started selling I used cardboard bookfolds on every book, even if it was a 25-cent sale. Over time, I've transitioned to vinyl bubble mailers for books worth less than $15 or $20. That makes the packing job go a lot faster, and I haven't had any more mishaps with books being damaged than when I was using bookfolds.

A lot of Amazon sellers believe that the company's trend toward hiding buyer and seller e-mail addresses is going to downgrade the customer experience, and I agree wholeheartedly. Getting in the way of our communication with buyers is going to hurt everyone in the long run, including Amazon.

But getting back to your question about repeat business: While you'd think the odds would be very high that a seller is going to have more than one book for a Marketplace customer, it happens. Every week or two as I scan through my feedback, I see a feedback comment from a customer indicating they were "pleased again from buying from this seller," or something to that effect. If a customer is happy with their purchase, they will often look through your other listings.

I am curious to know if other sellers have repeat business. What are the prospects for more repeat customers during the coming year, considering all the recent changes at Amazon, like the demise of zShops?