Guest post by: James Cecil

A couple of days ago I was presented with a problem by one of my customers from my Amazon store ReadItAgain books. The problem was that the shipment of a VHS cassette tape was not the right one that was sent to them. My first thoughts of were of gloom and despair that hit me as I had just walked into the door of my office. I was upset more at myself since I was the one who picked up the VHS cassette with the dust cover that clearly indicated the correct title that the customer ordered which was “The Land Before Time”. I did not even check to make certain that it was the right VHS Cassette tape in the VHS dust cover before I put into the box and got the box ready to ship out the next morning.

How did I find out that I made this error? By selling on Amazon.com I have my Amazon Seller account set up to automatically send me an e-mail copy of my customers concerns and request. That way I will not have to log into Amazon Seller Central and have to retrieve them. The customer that contacted me about this error on my part let me know that her 3-year grandson was disappointed that he did not get the “The Land Before Time” VHS and asked me if I still had that title. While I was still in my gloom and despair mood plus worry about the negative customer rating I would be getting I took a deep breath, exhaled and then went upstairs to a bedroom that has been turned into a storage room. I quickly found the “The Land Before Time” VHS cassette and made absolutely certain I indeed had the right VHS this time around and headed back to my office where I got onto my laptop and logged into my Amazon Seller account.  I immediately sent off an e-mail to my customer apologizing for the error that I made and informed her that I will shipping the correct VHS cassette tape out to her with an extra bonus in it. Four dinosaurs puppets from the “The Land Before Time” movie for her three-year old grandson to enjoy playing with while he watches the “The Land Before Time” VHS tape. I also told my customer that she would not have to pay for shipping and that I was enclosing a self address stamped envelope for the return of the incorrectly shipped VHS tape.

So what have I learned from this? To check and make sure that I have the correct title that the customer has ordered before fulfilling a customers order. You’ll find out like I did that you made a mistake and learn from that mistake. Just remember that it’s not an end of the world moment. You’re only human and you will make many more mistakes as you continue on with your enterprise. By me acknowledging the error to my customer and promptly taking care of the issue I have at least gone above and beyond this customer’s expectation and have given them a satisfying and rewarding experience.

All I can say is to admit to your customers that you made a mistake and show them that you willing to work towards an amicable solution, stay in contact and treat them like you would treat yourself. Sometimes you’ll come up with a simple solution to the problem of which your customer will think you’ve gone over to the top for them and leaves them completely satisfied.

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Order fulfillment is a huge responsibility when selling books on Amazon.  It’s hard enough to get a system down where you’ve got to be buying shipping supplies, picking books from the shelves, packing orders, printing postage and getting the orders to the post office. Obviously, it is a necessary evil for any online merchant.  Don’t you wish those pesky buyers would just give you the money and not expect anything in return? Successful online booksellers also have to provide exceptional customer service through prompt answers from potential customers as well as followup questions from previous customers.  Fortunately, Amazon customers typically require little hand-holding but you will still get various questions and issues that need addressed and one of these issues is non-delivery. Here are a few tips I have used to prepare books for shipping that minimize non-delivery issues.

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A business, depending on the size, can be made up of dozens to thousands of different processes and each business runs these processes differently.  An online used book selling business is no different.  Have you counted how many different processes that you’ve grown to just do day in and day out without even thinking?  What do I mean by a process?  A process is a vague term for any task that requires more than one action in  sequential order.  Think about an assembly line in a automobile factory.  An auto manufacturer first needs to find suppliers to build the cars.  Once the suppliers are found, they then need to bring in the raw materials to a factory.  In this factory, they have different stations setup to transform these raw materials into a finished product which would be a beautiful, new car!

What core processes constitute a typical online used book business?

1. Sourcing
2. Inventory Receiving
3. Inventory Management
4. Order Fulfillment
5. Customer Service

Under each of these processes, you’ll have other processes such as what you typically do at a library sale, how you pack books, answer customer questions, etc.  Each of these processes makes up your entire business and it is very important for you to periodically evaluate each process and determine if you’re truly meeting your goals in each area.  It is very important to set a a goal in each area in order for you to evaluate how you’re doing.  If you don’t have a goal, you have nothing to shoot for.  You’ll just continue poking along and continuing your ho-hum, mediocre process and then blame the economy when your sales tank.

There are numerous changes that you can make to your processes to improve efficiency, decrease time and leverage more resources to make each process a success.  From my experience, I will try to list and explain some of these changes to the core processes that I’ve made in my business that may help you in your business as well.

Tips for improving each core process of an online used book business

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We interrupt this regularly scheduled beginner series post for this special announcement of a prime example of a misinformed and quick to judge customer on Amazon.

I apologize for interrupting the flow of the upcoming series of beginner posts, but I just received an email from a customer and thought that this would be a prime example for anyone new to bookselling or booksellers that have never received a customer email like this.  I hope this post will give you a little taste of what could happen with a customer service issue and give you some ammo to fire back if this does happen.

Let me explain the situation and then I’ll let you know how I approached it.

Yesterday, an order came in on Amazon very soon after I had listed it for a large law book that was accurately listed at 2:55PM.  It was for $17 and I had made about a nickel for it so I was pretty happy.  This happens all the time anymore so I didn’t consider it any big deal.  I noticed it yesterday because I will occasionally go in and just take a peek at my orders even if I’m not processing them at the moment.

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